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Ci^e ^ifteD (3tain ant) ti^e (Btain ^iitm 



AN ADDRESS 

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE BUILDING 

OF THE 

Matt i^i^torical ^ocictp of Wi^tnn^m 

AT MADISON, OCTOBER 19, 1900 

BY 

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, LL.D. ' 

President of the Massachusetts Historical Society 



/ 



Cl^e ^ifteD main anD ti^e d^rain ^ifterjs 



AN ADDRESS 

AT THE DEDICATION OF THE BUILDING 



OF THE 



^tate J^i^torical ^ocietp of Wi^con^in 

AT MADISON, OCTOBER 19, 1900 



BY 



CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, LL.D. 

President of the Massachusetts Historical Society 



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^5 7^ 



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" Mais qui se presente comme dans un tableau cette grande image 
de nostre mere nature en son entiere maiest^ ; qui lit en son visage une 
si generale et constante variety ; qui se remarque la dedans, et uon 
soy, mais tout un royaume, comme un traict d'une poincte tres deli- 
cate, celuy la seul estime les choses selon leur iuste grandeur." — Essais 
de Montaigne, livre i. chapitre xxv. 

" But whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that 
great image of our mother Nature, in her full majesty and lustre, 
whoever in her face shall read so general and so constant a variety, 
whoever shall observe himself in that figure, and not himself but a 
whole kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil 
in comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things ac- 
cording to their true estimate and grandeur." — Hazlitt edition (1892) 
of Cotton's Montaigne, vol. i. p. 161. 



"OV. 25, 1939 



V 



'N 






ADDRESS 



On occasions such as this, a text upon which to dis- 
course is not usual ; I propose to venture an exception to 
the rule. I shall, moreover, offer not one text only, but 
two ; taken, the first, from a discourse prepared in the full 
theological faith of the seventeenth century, the other 
from the most far-reaching scientific publication of the 
century now drawing to its close. 

" God sifted a whole Nation that He might send choice 
Grain over into this Wilderness," said William Stoughton 
in the election sermon preached according to custom be- 
fore the Great and General Court of Massachusetts in 
April, 1668. To the same effect Charles Darwin wrote 
in 1871 : " There is apparently much truth in the belief 
that the wonderful progress of the United States, as well 
as the character of the people, are the results of natural 
selection ; for the more energetic, restless and courageous 
men from all parts of Europe have emigrated during the 
last ten or twelve generations to that great country and 
have there succeeded best ; " and the quiet, epoch-mark- 
ing, creed-shaking naturalist then goes on to express this 
startling judgment, which, uttered by an American, would 
have been deemed the very superlative of national van- 
ity : — " Looking to the distant future, I do not think 
[it] an exaggerated view [to say that] all other series of 
events — as that which resulted in the culture of mind in 
Greece, and that which resulted in the Empire of Rome — 
only appear to have purpose and value when viewed in 
connection with, or rather as subsidiary to, the great 
stream of Anglo-Saxon emigration to the West." ^ 

' The Descent of Man (ed. 1874), vol. ii. pp. 218, 219. 



Such are my texts; but, while I propose to preach 
from them largely and to them in a degree, I am not 
here to try to instruct you to-day in the history of your 
own State of Wisconsin, or in the magic record relating 
to the development of what we see fit to call the North- 
west. Indeed I am not here as an individual at all ; nor 
as one in any way specially qualified to do justice to 
the occasion. I am here simply as the head for the time 
being of what is unquestionably the oldest historical 
society in America, and, if reference is made to societies 
organized exclusively for the preservation of historical 
material and the furtherance of historical research, one 
than which few indeed anywhere in existence are more 
ancient of years. As the head of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society, I have been summoned to contribute what 
I may in honor of the completion of this edifice, the 
future home of a similar society, already no longer young ; 
— a society grown up in a country which, when the 
Massachusetts institution was formed, was yet the home 
of aboriginal tribes, — a forest-clad region known only to 
the frontiersman and explorer. Under such circumstances, 
I did not feel that I had a right not to answer the call. 
It was as if in our older Massachusetts time the pastor of 
the Plymouth, or of the Salem or Boston Church had 
been invited to the gathering of some new brotherhood 
in the Connecticut Valley, or the lighting of another 
candle of the Lord on the Concord or the Nashua, there 
to preach the sermon of ordination and extend the right 
hand of fellowship. 

And in this connection let me here mention one some- 
what recondite historical circumstance relating to this 
locality. You here may be more curiously informed, but 
few indeed in Massachusetts are to-day knowing of the 
fact that this portion of Wisconsin — Madison itself, and 
all the adjoining counties — was once, territorially, a part 
of the royally assigned limits of Massachusetts.^ Yet 

^ See Appendix A, p. 51. 



such was undisputably the fact ; and it lends a certain 
propriety, not the less poetic because remote, to my accept- 
ance of the part here to-day assigned me. 

Accepting that part, I none the less, as I have said, 
propose to break away from what is the usage in such 
cases. That usage, if I may have recourse to an old 
theological formula, is to improve the occasion histori- 
cally. An address, erudite and bristUng with statistics, 
would now be in order. An address in which the grad- 
ual growth of the community or the institution should 
be developed, and its present condition set forth ; with 
suitable reference to the days of small things, and a 
tribute of gratitude to the founders, and those who pa- 
tiently built their lives into the edifice, and made of it 
their monument. The names of all such should, I agree, 
be cut deep over its portico ; but this task, eminently 
proper on such occasions, I, a stranger, shall not under- 
take here and now to perform. For it others are far 
better qualified. I do not, therefore, propose to tell you 
of the St. Francis Xavier mission at Green Bay, or of 
Nicollet ; of Jacques Cartier, of Marquette or of Radisson, 
any more than of those two devoted benefactors and assidu- 
ous secretaries of this institution, Lyman C. Draper and 
Reuben G. Thwaites ; but, leaving them, and their deeds 
and services, to be commemorated by those to the manner 
born, and, consequently, in every respect better qualified 
than I for the work, I propose to turn to more general 
subjects and devote the time allotted me to generalities, 
and to the future rather than to the past. 

In an address delivered about eighteen months ag-o 
before the Massachusetts Historical Society, I discussed 
in some detail the modern conception of history as com- 
pared with that which formerly prevailed. I do not now 
propose to repeat what I then said. It is sufiicient for my 
present purpose to call attention to what we of the new 
school regard as the dividing line between us and the 



historians of the old school, the first day of October, 
1859, — the date of the publication of Darwin's " Origin 
of Species ; " the book of his immediately preceding the 
" Descent of Man," from which my text for to-day was 
taken. On the first day of October, 1859, the Mosaic 
cosmogony finally gave place to the Darwinian theory 
of evolution. Under the new dispensation, based not on 
chance or an assumed supernatural revelation, but on a 
patient study of biology, that record of mankind known 
as history, no longer a mere succession of traditions and 
annals, has become a unified whole, — a vast scheme sys- 
tematically developing to some result as yet not under- 
stood. Closely allied to astronomy, geology and physics, 
the study of modern history seeks a scientific basis from 
which the rise and fall of races and dynasties will be 
seen merely as phases of a consecutive process of evolu- 
tion, — the evolution of man from his initial to his ulti- 
mate state. When this conception was once reached, 
history, ceasing to be a mere narrative, made up of dis- 
connected episodes having little or no bearing on each 
other, became a connected whole. To each development, 
each epoch, race and dynasty its proper place was to be 
assigned ; and to assign that place was the function of 
the historian. Formerly each episode was looked upon 
as complete in itself ; and, being so, it had features more 
or less dramatic or instructive, and, for that reason, 
tempting to the historian, whether investigator or literary 
artist, — a Freeman or a Froude. Now, the first ques- 
tion the historian must put to himself relates to the 
proper adjustment of his particular theme to the entire 
plan, — he is shaping the fragment of a vast mosaic. 
The incomparably greater portion of history has, it is 
needless to say, little value, — not much more than the 
biography of the average individual; it is a record of 
small accomplishment, — in many instances a record of 
no accomplishment at all, perhaps of retrogression ; — 



for we cannot all be successful, nor even everlastingly 
and effectively strenuous. Among nations in history, 
as among men we know, the commonplace is the rule ; 
but, whether ordinary or exceptional, — conspicuous or 
obscure, — each has its proper place, and to it that place 
should be assigned. 

Having laid down this principle, I, eighteen months 
ago, proceeded to apply it to the society I was then ad- 
dressing, and to the history of the Commonwealth whose 
name that society bears ; and I gave my answer to it, 
such as that answer was. The same question I now put 
as concerns Wisconsin ; and to that also I propose to ven- 
ture an answer. As my text has indicated, that answer, 
also, will not in a sense be lacking in ambition. In the 
history of Wisconsin I shall seek to find verification of 
what Darwin suggested, — evidence of the truth of the 
great law of natural selection as applied also to man. 

Thus stated, the theme is a large one, and may be 
approached in many ways ; and, in the first place, I pro- 
pose to approach it in the way usual with modern his- 
torical writers. I shall attempt to assign to Wisconsin 
its place in the sequence of recent development ; for 
it is only during the last fifty years that Wisconsin has 
exercised any, even the most imperceptible, influence on 
what is conventionally agreed upon as history. That 
this region before the year 1848 had an existence, we 
know ; as we also know that, since the last glacial period 
when the earth's surface hereabouts assumed its present 
geographical form, — some five thousand, or, perhaps, 
ten, or even twenty thousand years ago, — it has been 
occupied by human beings, — fire-making, implement- 
using, garment-wearing, habitation-dwelling. With these 
we have now nothing to do. We, the historians, are con- 
cerned only with what may be called the mere fringe of 
Time's raiment, — the last half century of the fifty or 
one hundred centuries ; the rest belong to the ethnologist 



and the geologist, not to us. But the last fifty years, 
again, so far as the evolution of man from a lower to a 
higher stage of development is concerned, though a very 
quickening period, has, after all, been but one stage, and 
not the final stage, of a distinct phase of development. 
That phase has now required four centuries in which to 
work itself out to the point as yet reached ; for it harks 
back to the discovery of America, and the movement to- 
wards rehgious freedom which followed close upon that 
discovery, though having no direct connection with it. 
Martin Luther and Christopher Columbus had little in 
common except that their lives overlapped ; but those two 
dates, 1492 and 1517, — the landfall at San Salvador, and 
the theses nailed on the church door at Wittenberg, — 
those two dates began a new chapter in human history, 
the chapter in which is recounted the fierce struggle over 
the establishment of the principles of civil and religious 
liberty, and the recognition of the equality of men before 
the law. For, speaking generally but with approximate 
correctness, it may be asserted that, prior to the year 
1500, the domestic political action and the foreign com- 
plications of even the most advanced nations turned on 
other issues, — dynastic, predatory, social ; but, since that 
date, from the wars of Charles V., of Francis 1., and of 
Elizabeth, down to our own Confederate rebellion, almost 
every great struggle or debate has either directly arisen 
out of some religious dispute or some demand for in- 
creased civil rights, or, if it had not there its origin, it 
has invariably gravitated in that direction. Even Fred- 
erick of Prussia, the so-called Great — that skeptical, irre- 
ligious, cut-purse of the Empire, — the disciple and pro- 
tector of Voltaire and the apotheosized of Thomas Carlyle, 
— even Frederick figured as " the Protestant Hero ; " 
while Francis I. was "the Eldest Son of the Church," 
and Henry VIII. received from Rome the title of " De- 
fender of the Faith." 



Since the year 1500, on the other hand, what is known 
as modern history has been Httle more than a narrative 
of the episodes in the struggle not yet closed against arbi- 
trary rule, whether by a priesthood or through divine 
right, or by the members of a caste or of a privileged 
class, — whether ennobled, plutocratic or industrial. The 
right of the individual man, no matter how ignorant or 
how poor, to think, worship and do as seems to him best, 
provided always in so doing he does not infringe upon 
the rights of others, has through these four centuries 
been, as it still is, the underlying issue in every conflict. 
It seems likely, also, to continue to be the issue for a long 
time to come, for it never was more firmly asserted or 
sternly denied than now ; though to-day the opposition 
comes, not, as heretofore, from above, but from below, 
and finds its widest and most formidable expression in 
the teachings of those socialists who preach a doctrine of 
collectivism, or the complete suppression of the individual. 

That proposition, however, does not concern us here 
and now. Our business is with the middle period of the 
nineteenth century, and not with the first half of the 
twentieth ; and, no matter how closely we confine our- 
selves to the subject in hand, space and time will scarcely 
be found in which properly to develop the theme. Two 
and fifty years ago, when, in the summer of 1848, Wis- 
consin first took shape as a recognized political organiza- 
tion, — a new factor in man's development, — human 
evolution was laboring over two problems, — nationality 
and slavery. Slavery — that is, the ownership of one man 
or one class of men by another man or class of men — 
had existed, and been accepted as a matter of course, from 
the beginning. Historically the proposition did not admit 
of doubt. In Great Britain, bondage had only recently 
disappeared, and in Russia it was still the rule ; while 
among the less advanced nations its rightfulness was 
nowhere challenged, with us here in America it was a 



10 

question of race. The equality of whites before the law 
was an article of political faith ; not so that of the blacks. 
The Africans were distinctly an inferior order of being", 
and, as such, not only in the Southern or slave States, 
but throughout the North also, not entitled to the unre- 
stricted pursuit on equal terms of life, liberty and happi- 
ness. Hence a fierce contention, — the phase as it 
presented itself on the land discovered by Columbus in 
1492, of the struggle inaugurated by Luther in 1517. 
Its work was thus, so to speak, cut out for Wisconsin in 
advance of its being, — its place in the design of the 
great historical scheme prenatally assigned to it. How 
then did it address itself to its task ? how perform the 
work thus given it to do ? Did it, standing in the front 
rank of progress, help the great scheme along? Or, 
identifying itself with that reactionist movement ever on 
foot, did it strive with the stars in their courses ? 

Here, in the United States, the form in which the issue 
of the future took shape between 1830, when it first pre- 
sented itself, and 1848, when Wisconsin entered the 
sisterhood of States, is even yet only partially understood, 
in such occult ways did the forces of development interact 
and exercise influence on each other. For reasons not 
easy to explain, also, certain States came forward as the 
more active exponents of antagonistic ideas, — on the one 
side Massachusetts ; on the other, first, Virginia, and, 
later, South Carolina. The great and long sustained 
debate which closed in an appeal to force in the spring 
of 1861 must now be conceded as something well-nigh 
inevitable from fundamental conditions which dated from 
the beginning. It was not a question of slavery ; it was 
one of nationality. The issue had presented itself over 
and over again, in various forms and in different parts of 
the country ever since the Constitution had been adopted, 
— now in Pennsylvania ; now in Kentucky ; now in New 
England ; even here in Wisconsin ; but, in its most con- 



11 

Crete form, in South Carolina. It was a struggle for 
mastery between centripetal and centrifugal forces. At 
the close, slavery was, it is true, the immediate cause of 
quarrel, but the seat of disturbance lay deeper. In 
another country, and under other conditions, it was the 
identical struggle which, in feudal times, went on in Great 
Britain, in France and in Spain, and which, more recently, 
and in our own day only, we have seen brought to a 
close in Germany and in Italy, — the struggle of a rising 
spirit of nationality to overcome the clannish instinct, — 
the desire for local independence. In the beginning 
Virginia stood forward as the exponent of State Sover- 
eignty. Jefferson was its mouthpiece. It was he who 
drew up the famous Kentucky resolutions of 1798-99, 
and his election to the presidency in 1800 was the recog- 
nized victory of the school of States' Rights over Federal- 
ism. Later the parties changed sides, — as political parties 
are wont to do. Possession of the government led to a 
marked modification of views ; new issues were pre- 
sented ; and, in 1807, the policy which took shape in 
Jefferson's Embargo converted the Federalist into a dis- 
union organization, which disappeared from existence in 
the famous Hartford Convention of 1814-15. New Eng- 
land was then the centre of the party of the centrifugal 
force, and the issues were commercial. Fortunately, up 
to 1815 the issue between the spirit of local sovereignty 
and the ever-growing sense of nationality had not taken 
shape over any matter of difference sufficiently great and 
far-reaching to provoke an appeal to force. Not the less 
for that was the danger of conflict there, — a sufficient 
cause and suitable occasion only were wanting, and those 
under ordinary conditions might be counted upon to pre- 
sent themselves in due course of time. They did present 
themselves in 1832, still under the economical guise. 
But now the moral issue lurked behind, though the South 
did not yet stand directly opposed to the advancing spirit 



12 

of the age. But Nullification — the logical outcome of 
the theory of absolute State Sovereignty — was enun- 
ciated by Calhoun, and South Carolina took from Virginia 
the lead in the reactionary movement from nationality. 
The danger once more passed away ; but it is obvious to 
us now, and, it would seem, should have been plain to 
any cool-headed observer then, that, when the issue next 
presented itself, a trial of strength would be well-nigh 
inevitable. The doctrine of State Sovereignty, having 
assumed the shape of Nullification, would next develop 
that of Secession, and the direct issue over Nationality 
would be presented. 

Almost before the last indications of danger over the 
economical question had disapjoeared. Slavery loomed 
ominously up. They did not realize it at the time, but 
it was now an angry wrangle over a step in the progres- 
sive evolution of the human race. The equality of man 
before the law and his Maker was insisted upon, and 
was denied. It was a portentous issue, for in it human 
destiny was challenged. The desperate risk the Southern 
States then took is plain enough now. They entered 
upon a distinctly reactionary movement against two of 
the foremost growing forces of human development, the 
tendency to nationality and the humanitarian spirit. 
Though they knew it not, they were arraying themselves 
against the very stars in their courses. 

Under these circumstances the secession-slavery move- 
ment between 1835 and 1860 was a predestined failure. 
Because of fortuitous events — the chances of the battle- 
fieldj the impulse of individual genius, the exigencies of 
trade or the blunders of diplomats — it might easily 
have had an apparent and momentary triumph ; but the 
result upon which the Slave Power, as such, was intent, 
— the creation about the Gulf of Mexico and in the An- 
tilles of a great semi-tropical nationality, based on African 
servitude and a monopoHzed cotton production, — this 



13 

result was in direct conflict with the irresistible tendencies 
of mankind in its present stage of development. A 
movement in all its aspects radically reactionary, it could 
at most have resulted only in a passing anomaly. 

While the Southern, or Jamestown, column of Darwin's 
great Anglo-Saxon migration was thus following to their 
legitimate conclusions the teachings of Jefferson and Cal- 
houn, — the Virginia and South Carolina schools of 
State Sovereignty, Slavery and Secession, — the distinc- 
tively Northern column, — that entering through the 
Plymouth and Boston portals, — instinctively adhering 
to those principles of Church and State in the contention 
over which it originated, — found its way along the 
southern shores of the Great Lakes, through northern 
Ohio, southern Michigan, and northern Illinois, and then, 
turning north and west, spread itself over the vast region 
beyond the great lakes, and towards the upper waters of 
the Mississippi. But it is very noteworthy how the lead 
and inspiration in this movement still came from the 
original source. While in the South it passed from Vir- 
ginia to Carolina ; in the North it remained in Massachu- 
setts. Three men then came forward there, voicing more 
clearly than any or all others what was in the mind of 
the community in the way of aspiration, whether moral 
or political. Those three were : William Lloyd Garrison, 
Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams ; they were the 
prophetic voices of that phase of American political evo- 
lution then in process. Their messages, too, were curi- 
ously divergent ; and yet, apparently contradictory, they 
were, in reality, supplementary to each other. Garrison 
developed the purely moral side of the coming issue. 
Webster preached nationality, under the guise of love of 
the Union. Adams, combining the two, pointed out a 
way to the establishment of the rights of man under the 
Constitution and within the Union. While, in a general 
way, much historical interest attaches to the utterances 



14 

and educational influence of those three men during the 
period under discussion, the future political attitude of 
Wisconsin, then nascent, was deeply affected by them. 
To this subject, therefore, I propose to devote some space ; 
for, deserving attention, I am not aware that it has here- 
tofore received it. In doing so I cannot ignore the fact 
of my own descent from one of the three I have named ; 
but I may say in my own extenuation that John Quincy 
Adams was indisputably a considerable public character 
in his time, and when I, a descendant of his, undertake 
to speak of that time historically, I must, when he comes 
into the field of discussion, deal with him as best I may, 
assigning to him, as to his contemporaries, the place which, 
as I see it, is properly his or theirs. Moreover, I will 
freely acknowledge that an hereditary affiliation, if I may 
so express it, was not absent from the feeling which im- 
pelled me to accept your call. However much others had 
forgotten it, I well remembered that more than half a 
century ago, in the days of small things, it was in this 
region, as in central New York and the Western Reserve, 
that the seed cast by one from whom I claim descent fell 
in the good ground where it bore fruit an hundred fold. 
Recurring, then, to the three men I have named as 
voicing systematically a message of special significance 
in connection with the phase of political evolution, or of 
development if that word is preferred, then going on, — 
Garrison's message was distinctly moral and humani- 
tarian. In a sense, it was reactionary, and violently so. 
In it there was no appeal to patriotism, no recognition 
even of nationality. On the contrary, in the lofty atmo- 
sphere of humanitarianism in which he had his being, 
I doubt if Garrison ever inhaled a distinctively patriotic 
breath ; while he certainly denounced the Constitution 
and assailed the Union. He saw only the moral wrong 
of slavery, its absolute denial of the fundamental princi- 
ple of the equality of men before the law and before God, 



15 

and the world became his, — where freedom was, there 
was his country. To arouse the dormant conscience of 
the community by the fierce and unceasing denunciation 
of a great wrong was his mission ; and he fulfilled it : 
but, curiously enough, the end he labored for came in 
the way he least foresaw, and through the very instru- 
mentality he had most vehemently denounced, — it came 
within that Union which he had described as a compact 
with death, and under that Constitution which he had 
arraigned as a covenant with Hell. Yet Garrison was 
undeniably a prophet, voicing the gospel as he saw it 
fearlessly and without pause. As such he contributed 
potently to the final result. 

Next, Webster. It was the mission of Daniel Webster 
to preach nationality. In doing so he spoke in words of 
massive eloquence in direct harmony with the most pro- 
nounced aspiration of his time, — that aspiration which 
has asserted itself and worked the most manifest results 
of the nineteenth century in both hemispheres, — in 
Spain and Prussia during the Napoleonic war, in Russia 
during the long Sclavonic upheaval, again more recently 
in Germany and in Italy, and finally in the United States. 
The names of Stein, of Cavour and of Bismarck are 
scarcely more associated with this great instinctive move- 
ment of the century than is that of Daniel Webster. His 
mission it was to preach to this people Union, one and 
indivisible ; and he delivered his message. 

The mission of J. Q. Adams during his best and latest 
years, while a combination of that of the two others, was 
different from either. His message, carefully thought 
out, long retained, and at last distinctly enunciated, was 
his answer to the Jeffersonian theory of State Sovereignty, 
and Calhoun's doctrine of Nullification and its logical out- 
come, Secession. With both theory and doctrine, and 
their results, he had during his long political career been 
confronted j on both he had reflected much. It was dur- 



16 

ing the administration of Jefferson and on the question 
of Union that he had, in 1807, broken with his party and 
resigned from the Senate ; and with Calhoun he had been 
closely associated in the cabinet of Monroe. Calhoun 
also had occupied the vice-presidential chair during his 
own administration. He now met Calhoun face to face 
on the slavery issue, prophetically proclaiming a remedy 
for the moral wrong and the vindication of the rights of 
man, within the Union and under the Constitution, through 
the exercise of inherent war powers, whenever an issue 
between the sections should assume the insurrectionary 
shape. In other words. Garrison's moral result was to 
be secured, not through the agencies Garrison advocated, 
but by force of that nationality which Webster pro- 
claimed. This solution of the issue, J. Q. Adams never 
wearied of enunciating, early and late, by act, speech and 
letter; and his view prevailed in the end. Lincoln's 
proclamation of January, 1863, was but the formal de- 
claration of the policy enunciated by J. Q. Adams on the 
floor of Congress in 1836, and again in 1841, and yet 
again in greater detail in 1842.^ It was he who thus 
brought the abstract moral doctrines of Garrison into 
unison of movement with the nationality of Webster. 

The time now drew near when Wisconsin was to take 
her place in the Union, and exert her share of influence 
on the national polity, and through that polity on a phase 
of political evolution. South Carolina, by the voice of 
Calhoun, was preaching reaction, through slavery and in 
defiance of nationality : Massachusetts, through Garrison 
and Webster, was proclaiming the moral idea and nation- 
ality as abstractions ; while J. Q. Adams confronted 
Calhoun with the ominous contention that, the instant he 
or his had recourse to force, that instant the moral wrong 
could be made good by the sword wielded in defence of 
Nationality and in the name of the Constitution. 

^ See Appendix B, p. 53. 



17 

As 1848 waxed old, the debate grew angry. J. Q. 
Adams died in the early months of that memorable year; 
but his death in no way affected the course of events. 
The leadership in the anti-slavery struggle on the floor of 
Cono-ress and within the limits of the Constitution had 
passed from him four years before. He was too old 
longer to bear the weight of armor, or to wield weapons 
once familiar ; but the effect of his teachings remained, 
and were living realities wherever the New England 
column had penetrated, — throughout central New York, 
in " the Western Reserve," and especially in the region 
which bordered on Lake Michigan. Garrison still de- 
claimed against the Union as an unholy alliance with sin ; 
while, in the mind of Webster, his sense of the wrong of 
slavery was fast being overweighted by apprehension for 
nationality. In the mean time, a war of criminal aggres- 
sion against Mexico in behalf of Calhoun's reactionary 
movement had been brought to a close, and the question 
was as to the partition of plunder. On that great issues 
hinged, and over it was fought, the presidential election 
of 1848. A little more than fifty years ago, that was 
the first election in which Wisconsin participated. The 
number of those who now retain a distinct recollection of 
the canvass of 1848 and the questions then so earnestly 
debated are not many ; I chance to be one of those few. 
I recall one trifling incident connected, not with the 
canvass but with the events of that year, which, for some 
reason, made an impression upon me, and now illustrates 
curiously the remoteness of the time. I have said that 
J. Q. Adams died in February, 1848. Carried back with 
much funereal state from the Capitol at Washington to 
Massachusetts, he was in March buried at Quincy. An 
eloquent discourse was there delivered over his grave by 
the minister of the church of which the ex-President had 
been a member. He who delivered it was a scholar, as 
well as a natural orator of high order j and, in the course 



18 

of what he said he had occasion to refer to this remote 
region, then not yet admitted to statehood, and he did so 
under the name of " the Ouisconsin." That discourse 
was delivered on the 11th of March, 1848 ; and, on the 
29th of the following May, Wisconsin became a State. 

Returning now to the presidential election of 1848, it 
will be found that Wisconsin, the youngest community 
in the Union, came at once to the front as the banner 
State of the West in support of the principles on which 
the Union was established, and the maintenance and 
vindication of those fundamental principles within the 
Union and through the Constitution. In that canvass 
the great issues of the future were distinctly brought to 
the front. The old party organizations then still con- 
fronted each other, — the Henry Clay Whigs were over 
against the Jacksonian Democracy ; but in that election 
Lewis Cass, the legitimate candidate of the Democracy, — 
a Northern man with Southern principles, — so far as 
African slavery was concerned a distinct reactionist from 
the principles of the great Declaration of 1776, — Lewis 
Cass, of Michigan, was opposed to General Zachary 
Taylor, of Louisiana, himself a slaveholder, and nomi- 
nated by a party which in presenting his name carefully 
abstained from any enunciation of political principles. 
He was an unknown political quantity ; and no less a 
public character than Daniel Webster characterized his 
nomination as one not fit to be made. It yet remained 
to be seen that, practically, the plain, blunt, honest, well- 
meaning old soldier made an excellent President, whose 
premature loss was deeply and with reason deplored. His 
nomination, however, immediately after that of Cass, 
proved the signal for revolt. For the disciples of J. Q. 
Adams in both political camps it was as if the cry had 
again gone forth, " To your tents, Israel ! " — and 
a first fierce blast of the coming storm then swept across 
the land. In August the dissentients met in conference 



19 

at Buffalo, and there first enunciated the principles of the 
American political party of the future, — that party 
which, permeated by the sentiment of Nationality, was 
destined to do away with slavery through the war power, 
and to incorporate into the Constitution the principle of 
the equality of man before the law, irrespective of color 
or of race. Now, more than half a century after the 
event, it may fairly be said of those concerned in the 
Buffalo movement of 184:8 that they were destined to 
earn in the fulness of time the rare distinction of carry- 
ing mankind forward one distinct stage in the long pro- 
cess of evolution. In support of that movement Wis- 
consin was, as I have already said, the banner western 
State. In its action it simply responded to its early im- 
pulse received from New England and western New 
York. Thus the seed fell in fertile places and produced 
fruit an hundred fold. The law of natural selection, 
though not yet formulated, was at work. 

The election returns of 1848 tell the story. They are 
still eloquent. The heart of the movement of that year 
lay in Massachusetts and Vermont. In those two States, 
taken together, the party of the future polled, in 1848, a 
little over 28 per cent, of the aggregate vote cast. In 
Wisconsin it polled close upon 27 per cent. ; and this 27 
per cent, in Wisconsin is to be compared with 15 per 
cent, in Michigan, 12 per cent, in Illinois, less than 11 
per cent, in Ohio, and not 4 per cent, in the adjoining 
State of Iowa. In the three neighboring States of 'Michi- 
gan, Illinois and Iowa, taken together, the new move- 
ment gathered into itself 12 per cent, of the total voting 
constituency, while in Wisconsin it counted, as I have 
said, over 26 per cent. Thus, in 1848, Wisconsin was 
the Vermont of the West; sending to Congress as one 
of its three representatives Charles Durkee, a son of 
Vermont, the first distinctively anti-slavery man from the 
Northwest. Wisconsin remained the Vermont of the 



20 

West. From its very origin not the smallest doubt 
attached to its attitude. It emphasized it in words when 
in 1849 it instructed one of its Senators at Washington 
" to immediately resign his seat " because he had " out- 
raged the feelings of the people " by dalliance with the 
demands of the Slave Power ; it emphasized it by action 
when five years later its highest judicial tribunal did not 
hesitate to declare the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 
" unconstitutional and void." At the momentous election 
of 1860, Wisconsin threw 56 per cent, of its vote in 
favor of the ticket bearing the name of Abraham 
Lincoln ; nor did the convictions of the State weaken 
under the test of war. In 1864, when Wisconsin had 
sent into the field over 90,000 enlisted men to maintain 
the Union, and to make effective the most extreme 
doctrine of war powers under the Constitution, — even 
then, in the fourth year of severest stress, Wisconsin 
again threw 55 per cent, of its popular vote for the 
reelection of Lincoln. A year later the struggle ended. 
Throughout the ordeal Wisconsin never faltered. 

Of the record made by Wisconsin in the Civil War, I 
am not here to speak. That field has been sufficiently 
covered, and covered by those far better qualified than I 
to work in it. I will only say, in often quoted words, that, 
none then died more freely or in greater glory than those 
Wisconsin sent into the field, though then many died, 
and there was much glory. When figures so speak, com- 
ment weakens. Look at the record : — Fifty-seven regi- 
ments and thirteen batteries in the field ; a death roll 
exceeding 12,000 ; a Wisconsin regiment (2d) first in 
that roll of honor which tells off the regiments of the 
Union which suffered most, and two other Wisconsin regi- 
ments (7th and 26th), together, fifth ; while a brigade 
made up three quarters of Wisconsin battalions shows the 
heaviest aggregate loss sustained during the war by any 
similar command, and is hence known in the history of the 



21 

struggle as the "Iron Brigade." Thirteen Wisconsin 
regiments participated in Grant's brilliant movement on 
Vicksburg ; five were with Thomas at Chickamauga j seven 
with Sherman at Mission Ridge ; and, finally, eleven 
marched with him to the sea, while four remained behind 
to strike with Thomas at Nashville. Thus it may truly 
be said that wherever, between the 13th of April, 1861, 
and the 26th of April, 1865, death was reaping its heavi- 
est harvest, — whether in Pennsylvania, in Virginia, in 
Tennessee, in Mississippi, in Georgia, — at Shiloh, at Cor- 
inth, at Antietam, at Gettysburg, in the salient at Spott- 
sylvania, in the death-trap at Petersburg, or in the Penin- 
sula slaughter-pen, — wherever during those awful years 
the dead lay thickest, there the men from Wisconsin were 
freely laying down their lives. 

It is, however, no part of my present purpose to set 
forth here your sacrifices in the contest of 1861-65. 
What I have undertaken to do is to assig^n to Wisconsin 
its proper and relative place as a factor in one of the 
great evolutionary movements of man. As the twig was 
bent, the tree inclined. The sacrifices of Wisconsin life 
and treasure between 1861 and 1865 were but the fulfil- 
ment of the promise given by Wisconsin in 1848. The 
State, it is true, at no time during that momentous 
struggle rose to a position of unchallenged leadership 
either in the field or the council chamber. Among its 
representatives it did not number a Lincoln or a Sherman ; 
but it did supply in marked degree that greatest and 
most necessary of all essentials in every evolutionary 
crisis, a well-developed and thoroughly distributed popu- 
lar backbone. 

This racial characteristic, also, I take to be the one 
great essential to the success of our American experiment. 
In every emergency which arises there is always the cry 
raised for a strong hand at the helm, — the ship of state 
is invariably declared to be hopelessly drifting. But it 



22 

is in just those times of crisis that a widely difiPused 
individuality proves the greatest possible safeguard, — 
the only reliable pubHc safeguard. It is then with the 
State as it is with a strong, seaworthy ship manned by a 
hardy and experienced crew, in no way dependent on the 
one pilot who may chance to be at the wheel. In any 
stress of storm, the ship's company will prove equal to 
the occasion, and somehow provide for its own salvation. 
Under similar political conditions, a community asserts, 
in the long run, its superiority to the accidents of fortune, 
— the aberrations due to the influence of individual gen- 
ius, those winning numbers in the lottery of fate, — and 
evinces that staying power, which, no less now and here 
than in Rome and Great Britain, is the only safe rock of 
empire. The race thus educated and endowed is the 
masterful race, — the master of its own destiny, it is 
master of^he destiny of others; and of that crowning 
republican quality, Wisconsin, during our period of 
national trial, showed herself markedly possessed. While 
individuals were not exceptional, the average was unmis- 
takably high. 

And this I hold to be the highest tribute which can 
be paid to a political community. It implies all else. 
Unless I greatly err, this characteristic has, in the case 
of Wisconsin, a profound and scientific significance of 
the most far-reaching character; and so I find myself 
brought back to my text. As I have already more than 
once said, others are in every way better qualified than I 
to speak intelligently of the Wisconsin stock, — of the 
elements which enter into the brain and bone and sinew 
of the race now holding as its abiding-place and breeding- 
ground the region lying between Lake Michigan and the 
waters of the upper Mississippi, — between the State of 
Illinois on the south and Lake Superior on the north. I 
speak chiefly from impression, and always subject to cor- 
rection ; but my understanding is that this region was in 



23 

the main peopled by men and women representing in their 
persons what there was of the more enterprising, adven- 
turous and energetic of three of the most thoroughly 
virile and, withal, moral and intellectual branches of the 
human family, — I refer to the Anglo-Saxon of New 
England descent, and to the Teutonic and the Scandi- 
navian families. Tough of fibre and tenacious of prin- 
ciple, the mixed descendants from those races were well 
calculated to illustrate the operation of a natural law; 
and I have quite failed in my purpose if I have not 
improved this occasion to point out how in the outset of 
their political life as a community they illustrated the 
force of Stoughton's utterance and the truth of Darwin's 
remarkable generalization. By their attitude and action, 
at once intelligent and decided, they left their imprint 
on that particular phase of human evolution which then 
presented itself. They, in so doing, assigned to Wiscon- 
sin its special place and work in the great scheme of 
development, and forecast its mission in the future. 

I have propounded an historical theory ; it is for 
others, better advised, having passed upon it, to confirm 
or reject. 

There are many other topics which might here and now 
be discussed, perhaps advantageously, — topics closely 
connected with this edifice and with the occasion, — 
topics relating to libraries, the accumulation of historical 
material, and methods of work in connection with it ; but 
space and time alike forbid. A selection must be made ; 
and, in making my selection, I go back to the fact that, 
representing one historical society, I am here at the 
behest of another historical society ; and matters relating 
to what we call ''^history " are, therefore, those most ger- 
mane to the day. Coming, then, here from the East to 
a point which, in the great future of our American 
development, — a century, or, perchance, two or three 



24 

centuries hence, — may not unreasonably look forward 
to being the seat of other methods and a higher learning, 
I propose to pass over the more obvious and, possibly, 
the more useful, even if more modest, subjects of discus- 
sion, and to try my hand at one which, even if it chal- 
lenges controversy, is indisputably suggestive. I refer 
to certain of the more marked of those tendencies which 
characterize the historical work of the day. Having 
dealt with the sifted grain, I naturally come to speak of 
those who have told the tale of the sifting. Looking 
back, from the standpoint of 1900, over the harvested 
sheaves which stud the fields we have traversed, the 
retrospect is not to me altogether satisfactory. In fact, 
taken as a whole, our histories — I speak of those written 
by the dead only — have not, I submit, so far as we 
are concerned, fully met the requirements of time and 
place. Literary masterpieces, scientific treatises, philo- 
sophical disquisitions, sometimes one element predomi- 
nates, sometimes another ; but in them all something is 
wanting. That something I take to be an adequately 
developed literary sense. 

In dealing with this subject, I am well aware my criti- 
cism might take a wider range. I need not confine 
myself to history, inasmuch as, in the matter of literary 
sense, the shortcomings, or the excesses rather, of the 
American writer, are manifest. In the Greek, and in the 
Greek alone, this sense seems to have been instinctive. 
He revealed it, and he revealed it at once, in poetry, in 
architecture and in art, as he revealed it in the composi- 
tion of history. Of Homer we cannot speak ; but Hero- 
dotus and Phidias died within six years of each other, 
each a father in his calHng. With us Americans that 
intuitive literary sense, resulting in the perfection of 
literary form, seems not less conspicuous for its absence 
than it was conspicuous for its presence among the Greeks. 
In literature the American seems to exist in a medium of 



25 

stenographers and typewriters, and with a public printer 
at his beck and call. To such a degree is this the case 
that the expression I have just used — literary form — 
has, to many, and those not the least cultured, ceased to 
carry a meaning. Literary form they take to mean what 
they know as style ; while style is, with them, but another 
term for word-painting. Accordingly, with altogether 
too many of our American writers, to be voluminous and 
verbose is to be great. They would conquer by force of 
numbers — the number of words they use. I, the other 
day, chanced across a curious illustration of this in the 
diary of my father. Returning from his long residence 
in England at the time of the Civil War, he attended 
some ceremonies held in Boston in honor of a public 
character who had died shortly before. " The eulogy," 
he wrote, ^^ was good, but altogether too long. There is 
in all the American style of composition a tendency to 
difiPuseness, and the repetition of the same ideas, which 
materially impairs the force of what is said. I see it the 
more clearly from having been so long out of the atmos- 
phere." 

The failing is national ; nor in this respect does the 
American seem to profit by experience. Take, for in- 
stance, the most important of our public documents, the 
inaugurals of our Presidents. We are a busy people; 
yet our newly elected Presidents regularly inflict on us 
small volumes of information, and this, too, notwithstand- 
ing the fact that in the long line of inaugural common- 
places but one utterance stands out in memory, and that 
one the shortest of all, — the immortal second of Lincoln. 
Our present chief magistrate found himself unable to do 
justice to the occasion, in his last annual message, in less 
than eighteen thousand words ; and in the Congress to 
which this message was addressed, two Senators, in dis- 
cussing the " paramount " issue of the day, did so, the 
one in a speech of sixty-five thousand words ; the other 



26 

in a speech of fifty-five thousand. Webster replied to 
Hayne in thirty-five thousand; and Webster then did 
not err on the side of brevity. So in the presidential 
canvass now in progress. Mr. Bryan accepted his nomi- 
nation in a comparatively brief speech of nine thousand 
words ; and this speech was followed by a letter of five 
thousand, covering omissions because of previous brevity. 
President McKinley, in his turn, then accepted a renom- 
ination in a letter of twelve thousand words, — a letter 
actually terse when compared with his last annual mes- 
sage ; but which Mr. Carl Schurz subsequently proceeded 
to comment on in a vigorous address of fourteen thousand 
words. Leviathans in language, we Americans need to 
be Methuselahs in years. It was not always so. The 
contrast is, indeed, noticeable. Washington's first inau- 
gural numbered twenty-three hundred words. Including 
that now in progress, my memory covers fourteen presi- 
dential canvasses ; and by far the most generally applauded 
and effective letter of acceptance put forth by any candi- 
date during all those canvasses was that of Gefleral Grant 
in 1868. Including address and signature, it was com- 
prised in exactly two hundred and thirty words. With a 
brevity truly commendable, even if military, he used one 
word where his civilian successor found occasion for fifty- 
two. As to the opponent of that civilian successor, he sets 
computation at defiance. Indeed, speaking of Mr. Bryan 
purely from the historical standpoint, I seriously doubt 
whether, in all human experience, any man ever before 
gave utterance to an equal number of words in the same 
space of time. 

Leaving illustration, however, and returning to my 
theme, I will now say that in the whole long and memo- 
rable list of distinctively American literary men, — authors, 
orators, poets and story-tellers, — I recall but three who 
seem to me to have been endowed with a sense of form, 
at once innate and Greek; those three were Daniel 



27 

Webster, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
Yet, unless moulded by that instinctive sense of form, 
nothing can be permanent in literature any more than in 
sculpture, in painting or in architecture. Not size, nor 
solidity, nor fidelity of work, nor knowledge of detail, 
will preserve the printed volume any more than they will 
preserve the canvas or the edifice ; and this I hold to be 
just as true of history as of the oration, the poem or the 
drama. 

Surely, then, our histories need not all, of necessity, be 
designed for students and scholars exclusively ; and yet 
it is a noteworthy fact that even to-day, after scholars and 
story-tellers have been steadily at work upon it for nearly 
a century and a half, — ever since David Hume and Oliver 
Goldsmith brought forth their classic renderings, — the 
chief popular knowledge of over three centuries of Eng- 
lish history between John Plantagenet (1200) and Eliza- 
beth Tudor (1536) is derived from the pages of Shake- 
speare. There is also a curious theory now apparently in 
vogue in our University circles, that, in some inscrutable 
way, accuracy as to fact and a judicial temperament are 
inconsistent with a highly developed literary sense. Eru- 
dition and fairness are the qualities in vogue, while form 
and brilliancy are viewed askance. Addressing now an 
assembly made up, to an unusual extent, of those engaged 
in the work of instruction in history, I wish to suggest 
that this marked tendency of the day is in itself a passing 
fashion, and merely a reactionary movement against the 
influence of two great literary masters of the last genera- 
tion, — Macaulay and Carlyle. That the reaction had 
reason, I would by no means deny ; but, like most decided 
reactions, has it not gone too far? Because men weary 
of brilliant colors, and mere imitators try to wield the 
master's brush, it by no means follows that art does not 
find its highest expression in Titian and Tintoretto, Rem- 
brandt, Claude and Turner. It is the same with history. 



28 

Profound scholars, patient investigators, men of a judicial 
turn of mind, subtile philosophers and accurate annalists 
empty forth upon a patient, because somewhat indifferent, 
reading public volume after volume ; but the great masters 
of literary form, in history as in poetry, alone retain their 
hold. Thucydides, Tacitus and Gibbon are always there, 
on a level with the eye ; while those of their would-be 
successors who find themselves unable to tell us what 
they know, in a way in which we care to hear it, or within 
limits consistent with human life, are quietly relegated to 
the oblivion of the topmost shelf. 

I fear that I am myself in danger of sinning somewhat 
flagrantly against the canons I have laid down. Exceed- 
ing my allotted space, I am conscious of disregarding any 
correct rule of form by my attempt at dealing with more 
subjects than it is possible on one occasion adequately to 
discuss. None the less I cannot resist the temptation, — 
I am proving myself an American ; and having gone 
thus far, I will now go on to the end, even though alone. 
There are, I hold, three elements which enter into the 
make-up of the ideal historian, whether him of the past 
or him of the future ; — these three are learning, judg- 
ment and the literary sense. A perfect history, like a 
perfect poem, must have a beginning, a middle and an 
end ; and the well proportioned parts should be kept in 
strict subservience to the whole. The dress, also, should 
be in keeping with the substance; and both subordinated 
to the conception. Attempting no display of erudition, 
pass the great historical literatures and names in rapid re- 
view, and see in how few instances all these canons were 
observed. And first, the Hebrew. While the Jew cer- 
tainly was not endowed with the Greek's sense of form in 
sculpture, in painting or in architecture, in poetry and 
music he was, and has since been, preeminent. His 
philosophy and his history found their natural expression 
through his aptitudes. The result illustrates the supreme 



29 

intellectual power exercised by art. Of learning and judg- 
ment there is only pretence ; but imagination and power 
are there : and, even to this day, the Hebrew historical 
writings are a distinct literature, — we call them " The 
Sacred Books." We have passed from under that super- 
stition ; and yet it still holds a traditional sway. The 
books of Moses are merely a first tentative effort on the 
road subsequently trodden by Herodotus, Livy and 
Voltaire ; but their author was so instinct with imagi- 
nation and such a master of form that to this day his 
narrative is read and accepted as history by more human 
beings than are all the other historical works in existence 
combined in one mass. No scholar or man of reflection 
now believes that Moses was any more inspired than 
Homer, Julius Caesar or Thomas Carlyle ; but the imagi- 
nation and intellectual force of the man, combined with 
his instinct for literary form, sufficed to secure for what 
he wrote a unique mastery only in our day shaken.^ 

The Greek follows hard upon the Jew ; and of the 
Greek I have already said enough. He had a natural 
sense of art in all its shapes ; and, when it came to writ- 
ing history, Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon seemed 
mere evolutions. Of the three, Thucydides alone com- 
bined in perfection the quahties of erudition, judgment 
and form ; but to the last-named element, their literary 
form, it is that all three owe their immortality. 

It is the same with the Romans, — Livy, Sallust, 
Tacitus. The Roman had not that artistic instinct so 
noticeable in the Greek. He was, on the contrary, essen- 
tially a soldier, a ruler and organizer ; and a literary 
imitator. Yet now and again even in art he attained a 
proficiency which challenged his models. Cicero has held 
his own with Demosthenes; and Virgil, Horace and 
Juvenal survive, each through a mastery of form. Taci- 
tus, it is needless to say, is the Latin Thucydides. In 

^ See Appendix C, p. 58. 



30 

him again, five centuries after Thucydides, the three 
essentials are combined in the highest degree. The 
orbs of the great historical constellation are wide apart, 
— the interval that divided Tacitus from Thucydides is 
the same as that which divided Matthew Paris from 
Edward Gibbon ; — twice that which divides Shakespeare 
from Tennyson. 

Coming rapidly down to modern times, of the three 
great languages fruitful in historical work, — the French, 
English and German, — those writing in the first have 
alone approached the aptitude for form natural to the 
Greeks ; but in Gibbon only of those who have, in the three 
tongues, devoted themselves to historical work, were all 
the cardinal elements of historical greatness found united 
in such a degree as to command general assent to his pre- 
eminence. The Germans are remarkable for erudition, 
and have won respect for their judgment ; but their dis- 
regard of form has been innate, — indicative either of a 
lack of perception or of contempt.^ Their work accord- 
ingly will hardly prove enduring. The French, from 
Voltaire down, have evinced a keener perception of 
form, nor have they been lacking in erudition. Critical 
and quick to perceive, they have still failed in any one 
instance to combine the three great attributes each in its 
highest degree. Accordingly, in the historical firmament 
they count no star of the first magnitude. Their lights 
have been meteoric rather than permanent. 

In the case of Great Britain it is interesting to follow 
the familiar names, noting the shortcoming of each. The 
roll scarcely extends beyond the century, — Hume, Robert- 

^ " Not only does a German writer possess, as a rule, a full measure of 
the patient industry which is required for thinking everything that may be 
thought about his theme, and knowing what others have thought ; he alone, 
it seems, when he comes to write a book about it, is imbued with the belief 
that that book ought necessarily to be a complete compendium of every- 
thing that has been so thought, whether by himself or others." — The Athe- 
nceum, September 8, 1900, p. 303. 



31 

son and Gibbon constituting the solitary remembered 
exceptions. Of Gibbon, I have already spoken. He 
combined in highest degree all the elements of the 
historian, — in as great a degree as Thucydides or 
Tacitus. He was an orb of the first order ; and it was 
his misfortune that he was born and wrote before Darwin 
gave to history unity and a scheme. Hume was a subtle 
philosopher, and his instinctive mastery of form has alone 
caused his history to survive. He was not an investi- 
gator in the modern sense of the term, nor was he gifted 
with an intuitive historical instinct. Robertson had fair 
judgment and a well-developed though in no way remark- 
able sense of form ; but he lacked erudition, and, as com- 
pared with Gibbon, for example, was content to accept 
his knowledge at second hand. Telling his story well, 
he was never master of his subject. 

Coming down to our own century, and speaking only 
of the dead, a series of familiar names at once suggest 
themselves, — Mitf ord, Grote and Thirlwall ; Arnold and 
Merivale ; Milman, Lingard, Hallam, Macaulay, Carlyle, 
Buckle, Froude, Freeman and Green, — naming only the 
more conspicuous. Mitford was no historian at all ; 
merely an historical pamphleteer. His judgment was in- 
ferior to his erudition even, and he had no sense of form. 
Grote was erudite, but he wrote in accordance with his 
poHtical affinities, and what is called the spirit of the time 
and place ; and that time and place were not Greece, nor 
the third and fourth centuries before Christ. He had, 
moreover, no sense of literary form, for he put what he 
knew into twelve volumes, when human patience did not 
suffice for six. Thirlwall was erudite in a way, and a 
thinker and writer of unquestionable force; but his 
work on Greece was written to order, and is what is 
known as a " standard history." Correct, but devoid of 
inspiration, it is slightly suggestive of a second-class epic. 
Arnold is typical of scholarship and insight j his judg- 



32 

ment is excellent : but of literary art, so conspicuous in 
his son, there is no trace. Merivale is scholarly and 
academic. Milman was hampered by his church training, 
which fettered his judgment ; learned, as learning went 
in those days, there is in his writings nothing that would 
attract readers or students of a period later than his own. 
Lingard was another church historian. A correct writer, 
he tells England's story from the point of view of Rome. 
Hallam is deeply read, and judicial ; but the literary 
sense is conspicuously absent. His volumes are well-nigh 
unreadable. Freeman is the typical modern historian of 
the original-material-and-monograph school. He writes 
irrespective of readers. Learned beyond compare, he 
cumbers the shelves of our libraries with an accumulation 
of volumes which are not literature. 

Of Henry Thomas Buckle and of John Richard Green I 
will speak together, and with respectful admiration. Both 
were prematurely cut off, almost in what with historical 
writers is the period of promise ; for, while Green at the 
time of his death was forty-seven. Buckle was not yet 
forty-one. What they did, therefore, — and they both 
did much, — was indicative only of what they might have 
done. Judged by that, — ex pede Herculeyn, — I hold 
that they come nearer to the ideal of what a twentieth 
century historian should be than any other writers in 
our modern English tongue. That Buckle was crude, 
impulsive, hasty in generalization and paradoxical in 
judgment is not to be gainsaid; — but he wrote before 
Darwin ; and, when he published his history, he was but 
thirty-six. What might he not have become had he been 
favored with health, and lived to sixty. Very different 
in organization, he and Green alike possessed in high 
degree the spirit of investigation and the historical 
insight, combined with a well-developed literary sense. 
Men of untiring research, they had the faculty of ex- 
pression. Artists as well as scholars, they inspired. 



33 

Their early death was in my judgment an irreparable loss 
to English historical lore and the best historical treat- 
ment. 

I come now to Macaulay, Carlyle and Froude, the three 
literary masters of the century who have dealt with history 
in the English tongue ; and I shall treat of them briefly, 
and in the inverse order. Froude is redeemed by a sense 
of literary form ; as an historian he was learned, but 
inaccurate, and his judgment was fatally defective. He 
was essentially an artist. Carlyle was a poet rather than 
an historian. A student, with the insight of a seer and a 
prophet's voice, his judgment was fatally biased. A won- 
derful master of form, his writings will endure ; but rather 
as epics in prose than as historical monuments. Macaulay 
came, in my judgment, nearer than any other English 
writer of the century to the great historical stature ; but 
he failed to attain it. The cause of his failure is an 
instructive as well as an interesting study. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay is unquestionably the 
most popular historian that ever wrote. His history, 
when it appeared, was the literary sensation of the day, 
and its circulation increased with each succeeding vol- 
ume. Among historical works, it alone has in its vogue 
thrown into the shade the most successful novels of the 
century, — those of Scott, Thackeray and Dickens, Jane 
Eyre, Robert Elsmere, and even Richard Carvel, the last 
ephemeral sensation ; but, of the three great attributes 
of the historian, Macaulay was endowed with only one. 
He was a man of vast erudition ; and, moreover, he was 
gifted with a phenomenal memory, which seemed to put 
at his immediate disposal the entire accumulation of his 
omnivorous reading. His judgment was, however, defec- 
tive ; for he was, from the very ardor of his nature,^ more 

^ " It is well to realize that this greatest history of modern times was writ- 
ten by one in whom a distrust in enthusiasm was deeply rooted. This 
cynicism was not inconsistent with partiality, with definite prepossessions, 
with a certain spite. The coaTiction that enthusiasm is inconsistent with 



34 

or less o£ a partisan, while the wealth of his imagination 
and the exuberance of his rhetoric were fatal to his sense 
of form. He was incomparably the greatest of historical 
raconteurs, but the fascination of the story overcame his 
sense of proportion, and he was buried under his own 
riches. For it is a great mistake to suppose, as so many 
do, that what is called style, no matter how brilliant, or 
how correct and clear, constitutes in itself literary form ; 
it is a large and indispensable element in literary form, 
but neither the whole, nor indeed the greatest part of it. 
The entire scheme, the proportion of the several parts to 
the whole and to each other, the grouping and the pre- 
sentation, the background and the accessories constitute 
literary form ; the style of the author is merely the 
drapery of presentation. Here was where Macaulay 
failed ; and he failed on a point which the average 
historical writer, and the average historical instructor still 
more, does not as a rule even take into consideration. 
Macaulay's general conception of his scheme was so 
imperfect as to be practically impossible ; and this he 
himself, when too late, sadly recognized. His interest 
in his subject and the warmth of his imagination swept 
him away, — they were too strong for his sense of pro- 
portion. Take, for instance, two such wonderful bits as 
his account of the trial of the seven bishops, and his nar- 
rative of the siege of Londonderry. They are master- 
pieces ; but they should be monographs. They are in 
their imagery and detail out of all proportion to any 
general historical plan. They imply a whole which would 
be in itself an historical library rather than a history. 
On the matter of judgment it is not necessary to dwell. 
Macaulay's work is unquestionably history, and history 

intellectual balance was engrained in his mental constitution, and confirmed 
by study and experience. It might be reasonably maintained that zeal for 
men or causes is an historian's undoing, and that * reserve sympathy ' — the 
principle of Thueydides — is the first lesson he has to learn." J. B. Bury, 
Introduction to his edition (1896) of Gibbon, vol. i. pp. Ixvii.-lxviii. 



35 

on a panoramic scale ; but the pigments he used are 
indisputably Whig. Yet his method was instinctively 
correct. He had his models and his scheme, — he made 
his preliminary studies, — he saw his subject as a whole, 
and in its several parts ; but he labored under two dis- 
advantages: — In the first place, like Gibbon, he was born 
and wrote before the discoveries of Darwin had given its 
whole great unity to history ; and, in the second place, 
he had not thought his plan fully out, subordinating 
severely to it both his imagination and his rhetoric. 
Accordingly, so far as literary form was concerned, his 
history, which in that respect above all should, with his 
classic training, have been an entire and perfect chryso- 
lite, was in fact a monumental failure. It was not even 
a whole ; it was only a fragment. 

Coming now to our own American experience, and 
still speaking exclusively of the writings of the dead, it 
is not unsafe to say that there is as yet no American his- 
torical work which can call even for mention among those 
of the first class. The list can speedily be passed in 
review, — Marshall, Irving, Prescott, Hildreth, Bancroft, 
Motley, Palfrey and Parkman. Except those yet living, 
I do not recall any others who would challenge consider- 
ation. That Marshall was endowed with a calm, clear 
judgment, no reader of his judicial opinions would deny ; 
but he had no other attribute of an historian. He 
certainly was not historically learned, and there is no 
evidence that he was gifted with any sense of literary 
proportion. Irving was a born man of letters. With a 
charming style and a keen sense of humor, he was as an 
historical writer defective in judgment. Not a profound 
or accurate investigator, as became apparent in his 
Columbus and his Washington, his excellent natural 
literary sense was but partially developed. Perhaps he 
was born before his time ; perhaps his education did not 
lead him to the study of the best models ; but, however 



36 

it came about, he failed, and failed indisputably, in form. 
Prescott was a species of historical pioneer, — an adven- 
turer in a new field of research and of letters. Not only 
was he, like Macaulay and the rest, born before Darwin 
and the other great scientific lights of the century had 
assigned to human history its unity, limits and signifi- 
cance, but Prescott was not a profound scholar, nor yet 
a thorough investigator ; his judgment was by no means 
either incisive or robust, and his style was elegant, as the 
phrase goes, rather than tersely vigorous. He wrote, 
moreover, of that which he never saw, or made himself 
thoroughly part of even in imagination. Laboring 
under great disadvantages, his course was infinitely 
creditable ; but his portrait in the gallery of historians is 
not on the eye line. Of Hildreth, it is hardly necessary 
to speak. Laborious, and persevering, his investigation 
was not thorough ; indeed he had not taken in the 
fundamental conditions of modern historical research. 
With a fatally defective judgment, he did not know 
what form was. 

George Bancroft was in certain ways unique, and, 
among writers and students, his name cannot be men- 
tioned without respect. He was by nature an investi- 
gator. His learning and philosophy cannot be called 
sound, and his earlier manner was something to be for- 
ever avoided; but he was indefatigable as a collector, 
and his patience knew no bounds. He devoted his life 
to his subject ; and his life came to a close while he was 
still dwelling on the preliminaries to his theme. A par- 
tisan, and writing in support of a preconceived theory, 
his judgment was necessarily biased ; while, as respects 
literary form, though he always tended to what was 
better, he never even approximately reached what is best. 
He, too, like Macaulay, failed to grasp the wide and 
fundamental distinction between a proportioned and 
complete history and a thorough historical monograph. 



37 

His monumental work, therefore, is neither the one nor 
the other. As a collection of monographs, it is too con- 
densed and imperfect ; as a history, it is cumbersome, 
and enters into unnecessary detail. 

From a literary point of view Motley is unquestionably 
the most brilHant of American historical writers. He 
reminds the reader of Froude. Not naturally a patient 
or profound investigator, he yet forced himself to make 
a thorough study of his great subject, and he was gifted 
with a remarkable descriptive power. A man of intense 
personahty, he was, however, defective in judgment, if 
not devoid of the faculty. He lacked calmness and method. 
He could describe a siese or a battle with a vividness 
which, while it revealed the master, revealed also the 
historian's limitations. With a distinct sense of literary 
form, he was unable to resist the temptations of miagi- 
nation and sympathy. His taste was not severe ; his tem- 
per the reverse of serene. His defects as an historian 
are consequently as apparent as are his merits as a writer. 

Of PaKrey, the historian, I would speak with the deep 
personal respect I entertained for the man. A typical 
New Englander, a victim almost of that " terrible New 
England conscience," he wrote the history of New Eng- 
land. A scholar in his way, and the most patient of 
investigators, he had, as an historian, been brought up in 
a radically wrong school, that of New England theology. 
There was in him not a trace of the skeptic ; not a sugges- 
tion of the humorist or easy-going philosopher. He wrote 
of New England from the inside, and in close sympathy 
with it. Thus, as respects learning, care and accuracy, 
he was in no way deficient, while he was painstaking and 
conscientious in extreme. His training and mental char- 
acteristics, however, impaired his judgment, and he was 
quite devoid of any sense of form. The investigator will 
always have recourse to his work ; but, as a guide, its 
value will pass away with the traditions of the New Eng- 



38 

land theological period. From the literary point of view 
the absence of all idea of proportion renders the bulk of 
what he wrote impossible for the reader. 

Of those I have mentioned, Parkman alone remains ; 
perhaps the most individual of all our American histori- 
ans, the one tasting most racily of the soil. Parkman did 
what Prescott failed to do, what it was not in Prescott 
ever to do. He wrote from the basis of a personal know- 
ledge of the localities in which what he had to narrate 
occurred, and the characteristics of those with whom he 
undertook to deal. To his theme he devoted his entire 
life, working under difficulties even greater than those 
which so cruelly hampered Prescott. His patience under 
suffering was infinite ; his research was indefatigable. In 
this respect, he left nothing to be desired. While his 
historical judgment was better than his literary taste, his 
appreciation of form was radically defective. Indeed he 
seemed almost devoid of any true sense of proportion. 
The result is that he has left behind him a succession of 
monographs of more or less historical value or literary 
interest, but no complete, thoroughly designed and care- 
fully proportioned historical unit. Like all the others, 
his work lacks form and finish. 

The historical writers of more than an hundred years 
have thus been passed in hasty review, nor has any nine- 
teenth century compeer of Thucydides, Tacitus and Gib- 
bon been found among those who have expressed them- 
selves in the English tongue. Nor do I think that any 
such could be found in other tongues ; unless, perchance, 
among the Germans, Theodor Mommsen might challenge 
consideration. Of Mommsen's learning there can be no 
question. I do not think there can be much of his insight 
and judgment. The sole question would be as to his 
literary form ; nor, in that respect, judging by the recol- 
lection of thirty years, do I think that, so far as his his- 
tory of Rome is concerned, judgment can be lightly 



39 



passed against him. But, on this point, the verdict of 
time only is final. Before that verdict is in his case ren- 
dered, another half century of probation must elapse.^ 



There is still something to be taken into consideration. 
I have as yet dealt only with the writers ; the readers 
remain. During the century now ending, what changes 
have here come about ? For one, I frankly confess myself 
a strong advocate of what is sometimes rather contemptu- 
ously referred to as the popularization of history. I have 
but a limited sympathy with those who, from the ethereal- 
ized atmosphere of the cloister, whether monkish or col- 

^ " C'est sous ces deux aspects — qui sont en r^alite les deux faces de 
I'esprit de Mommseu, le savant et le politique — qu'il convieut d'dtudier cet 
ouvrage. 

" Dans I'exposd scientifique de VHistoire romaine on ne sait ce qu'on doit 
le plus admirer, ou de la science colossale de I'auteur ou de I'art avec la- 
quelle elle est mise en ceuvre. 

" C'^tait line entreprise colossale que celle de r^sumer tons les travaux 
sur la matiere depuis Niebulir. Mommsen lui-nieme avait contribud k ce 
travail par la quantite fabuleuse de mdmoires qu'il avait ecrits sur les 
points les plus spdciaux du droit romain, de I'arch^ologie ou de I'histoire. 
Or tout cela est assimild d'une maniere merveilleuse dans une narration his- 
torique qui est un des chefs-d'oeuvre de I'historiographie. L'histoire romaine 
est une ceuvre extraordinaire dans sa condensation, comme il n'en existe 
nulle autre au monde, enfermant dans des dimensions si restreintes (3 
volumes in 8°) tant de choses et de si bonnes choses. Mommsen raconte 
d'une maniere si attrayante que des les premieres lignes vous etes entrain^. 
Ses grands tableaux sur les premieres migrations des peuples en Italic, sur 
les debuts de Rome, sur les Etrusques, sur la domination des Hellenes en 
Italic ; ses chapitres sur les institutions romaines, le droit, la religion, 
I'arm^e et I'art ; sur la vie dconomique, I'agriculture, I'industrie et le com- 
merce ; sur le ddvelopperaent intdrieur de la politique romaine ; sur les 
Celtes et sur Carthage ; sur les p^ripdties de la Revolution romaine depuis 
les Gracques k Jules Cesar ; sur I'Orient grec, la Mac^doine ; sur la sou- 
mission de la Gaule : tout cela forme un ensemble admirable. 

" Comme peintre de grands tableaux historiques, je ne vois parmi les 
historiens contemporains qu'un homme qui puisse etre compare k Mommsen, 
c'est Ernest Renan : c'est la meme touche large, le meme sens des propor- 
tions, le meme art de faire voir et de faire comprendre, de rendre vivantes 
les choses par les details typiques qui se gravent pour toujours dans la ra6- 
moire." Guilland, L'Allemagne Nouvelle et ses Historiens (1900), pp. 121- 
22. 



40 

legiate, seek truth's essence and pure learning only, 
regardless of utility, of sympathy or of applause. The 
great historical writer, fully to accomplish his mission, 
must, I hold, be in very close touch with the generation 
he addresses. In other words, to do its most useful work, 
historical thought must be made to permeate what we 
are pleased to call the mass ; it must be infiltrated through 
that great body of the community which, moving slowly 
and subject to all sorts of influences, in the end shapes 
national destinies. The true historian, — he who most 
sympathetically, as well as correctly, reads to the present 
the 'lessons to be derived from the experience of the past, 
— I hold to be the only latter-day prophet. That man 
has a message to deliver ; but, to deliver it effectively, he 
must, like every successful preacher, understand his audi- 
ence ; and, to understand it, he must either be instinc- 
tively in sympathy with it, or he must have made a study 
of it. Of those instinctively in sympathy, I do not speak. 
That constitutes genius, and genius is a law unto itself ; 
but I do maintain that instructors in history and histori- 
cal writers who ignore the prevailing literary and educa- 
tional conditions, therein make a great mistake. He fails 
fatally who fails to conform to his environment ; and this 
is no less true of the historian than of the novelist or 
politician. 

In other words, what have we to say of those who read ? 
What do we know of them ? Not much, I fancy. In 
spite of our public libraries, and in spite of the immensely 
increased diffusion of printed matter through the agency 
of those libraries and of the press, what those who com- 
pose the great mass of the community are reading, what 
enters into their intellectual nutriment, and thence passes 
into the secretions of the body politic, — this, I imagine, 
is a subject chiefly of surmise. The field is one upon 
which I do not now propose to enter. Too large, it is 
also a pathless wilderness. I would, however, earnestly 



41 

commend it to some more competent treatment at an early 
convention of librarians or publishers. To-day we must 
confine ourselves to history. For what, in the way of 
history, is the demand ? Who are at present the popular 
historical writers? How can the lessons of the past be 
most readily and most effectually brought home to the 
mind and thoughts of the great reading public, vastly 
greater and more intelligent now than ever before ? 

This is something upon which the census throws no 
light. There is a widespread impression among those 
more or less qualified to form an opinion that the general 
capacity for sustained reading and thinking has not in- 
creased or been strengthened with the passage of the 
years. On the contrary, the indications, it is currently 
supposed, are rather of emasculation. Everything must 
now be made easy and short. There is a constant demand 
felt, especially by our periodical press, for information on 
all sorts of subjects, — historical, philosophical, scientific, 
— but it must be set forth in what is known as a popular 
style, that is introduced into the reader in a species of 
sugared capsule, and without leaving any annoying taste 
on the intellectual palate. The average reader, it is said, 
wants to know something concerning all the topics of 
the day ; but, while it is highly desirable he should be 
gratified in this laudable, though languid, craving, he 
must not be fatigued in the effort of acquisition, and he 
will not submit to be bored. It is then further argued 
that this was not the case formerly ; that in what are 
commonly alluded to as " the good old times," — always 
the times of the grandparents, — people had fewer books, 
and fewer people read ; but those who did read, deterred 
neither by number of pages nor by dryness of treatment, 
were equal to the feat of reading. To-day, on the con- 
trary, almost no one rises to more than a magazine article ; 
a volume appalls. 

This is an extremely interesting subject of inquiry, 



42 

were the real facts only attainable. Unfortunately they 
are not. We are forced to deal with impressions; and 
impressions, always vague, are usually deceptive. At the 
same time, when glimpses of a more or less remote past 
do now and again reach us, they seem to indicate mental 
conditions calculated to excite our special wonder. We 
do know, for instance, that in the olden days, — before 
public libraries and periodicals, and the modern cheap 
press and the Sunday newspaper were devised, — when 
books were rarities, and reading a somewhat rare accom- 
plishment, — the Bible, Shakespeare, Paradise Lost, the 
Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe, the Specta- 
tor and Tatler, Barrows' Sermons and Hume's History 
of England were the standard household and family 
literature ; and the Bible was read and reread until its 
slightest allusions passed into familiar speech. Indeed, 
the Bible, in King James's version, may be said to have 
been for the great mass of the community, — those who 
now have recourse to the Sunday paper, — the sum and 
substance of English literature. In this respect it is 
fairly open to question whether the course of evolution 
has tended altogether toward improvement. Now and 
again, however, we get one of these retrospective glimpses 
which is simply bewildering ; and, while indulging in it, 
one cannot help pondering over the mental conditions 
which once apparently prevailed. The question suggests 
itself, were there giants in those days? — or did the 
reader ask for bread, and did they give him a stone ? We 
know, for instance, what the public library and circulat- 
ing library of to-day are. We know, to a certain extent, 
what the reading demand is, and who the popular authors 
are. We know that, while history must content itself 
with a poor one in twenty, the call for works of fiction is 
more than a third of the whole, while nearly eighty per 
cent, of the ordinary circulation is made up of novels, 
story books for children, and periodicals. It is the 



43 

lightest form of pabulum. This, in 1900. Now, let us 
get a glimpse of " the good old times." 

In the year 1790, a humorous rascal named Burroughs 
— once widely known as " the notorious Stephen Bur- 
roughs " — found himself stranded in a town on Long 
Island, New York, a refugee from a Massachusetts gaol 
and whipping-post, the penalties incurred in or at both of 
which lie had richly merited. In the place of his refuge. 
Burroughs served as the village schoolmaster ; and, being 
of an observant turn of mind, he did not fail presently to 
note that the people of the place were " very illiterate," 
and almost entirely destitute of books of any kind, " except 
schoolbooks and bibles." Finding among the younger 
people of the community many "possessing bright abilities 
and a strong thirst for information," Burroughs asserts 
that he bestirred himself to secure the funds necessary 
to found the nucleus of a public library. Having in a 
measure succeeded, a meeting of " the proprietors " was 
called " for the purpose of selecting a catalogue of 
books ; " and presently the different members presented 
lists " peculiar to their own tastes." Prior to this meet- 
ing it had been alleged that the people generally antici- 
pated that the books would be selected by the clergyman 
of the church, and would " consist of books of divinity, 
and dry metaphysical writings ; whereas, should they be 
assured that histories and books of information would 
be procured," they would have felt very differently. And 
now, when the lists were submitted, " Deacon Hodges 
brought forward ^Essays on the Divine Authority for 
Infant Baptism,' ' Terms of Church Communion,' ' The 
Careful Watchman,' ' Age of Grace,' etc. ; Deacon Cook's 
collection was ' History of Martyrs,' * Rights of Con- 
science,' ' Modern Pharisees,' ' Defence of Separates ; ' Mr. 
Woolworth exhibited ' Edwards against Chauncy,' ' His- 
tory of Redemption,' ^ Jennings's Views,' etc. ; Judge 
Hurlbut concurred in the same ; Dr. Rose exhibited ' Gay's 



44 

Fables,' ' Pleasing Companion/ ^ Turkish Spy,' while I," 
wrote Burroughs, " for the third time recommended 
* Hume's History,' * Voltaire's Histories,' ' RoUin's An- 
cient History,' * Plutarch's Lives,' etc." 

It would be difficult to mark more strikingly the devel- 
opment of a century, than by thus presenting Hume's 
History and RoUin as typical of what was deemed light 
and popular reading at one end of it, and the Sunday 
newspaper at the other. As I have already intimated, 
they were either giants in those days, or husks supphed 
milk for babes. Recurring, however, to present con- 
ditions, the popular demand for historical hterature is 
undoubtedly vastly larger than it was a century ago ; nor 
is it by any means so clear as is usually assumed that the 
solid reading and thinking power of the community has 
at all deteriorated. That yet remains to be proved. A 
century ago, it is to be borne in mind, there were no 
public hbraries at all, and the private collections of books 
were comparatively few and small. It is safe, probably, 
to assume that there are a hundred, or even a thousand, 
readers now to one then. On this head nothing even 
approximating to what would be deemed conclusive evi- 
dence is attainable ; but the fair assumption is that, while 
the hglit and ephemeral, knowledge-made-easy reading is 
a development of these latter years, it has in no way dis- 
placed the more sustained reading and severe thought 
of the earher time. On the contrary, that also has had 
its share of increase. Take Gibbon, for instance. A 
few years ago, an acute and popular English critic, in 
speaking of the newly pubhshed " Memoirs " of Gibbon, 
used this language : — " AU readers of the ' Dechne and 
Fall,' — that is to say, all men and women of a sound 
education," etc. If Mr. Frederic Harrison was correct 
in his generalization in 1896, certainly more could not 
have been said in 1796 ; and, during the intervening 
hundred years, the class of those who have received " a 



45 

sound education " has undergone a prodigious increase. 
Take Harvard College, for instance ; in 1796 it gradu- 
ated thirty-tliree students, and in 1896 it graduated four 
hundred and eight, — an increase of more than twelve- 
fold. In 1796, also, there were not a tenth part of 
the institutions of advanced education in the country 
which now exist. The statistics of the publishing houses 
and the shelves of the bookselling establishments all 
point to the same conclusion. Of course, it does not 
follow that because a book is bought it is also read ; but 
it is not unsafe to say that twenty copies of Gibbon's 
" Decline and Fall " are called for in the bookstores of 
to-day to one that was called for in 1800. 

On this subject, however, very instructive Hght may be 
derived from* another quarter. I refer to the Public 
Library. While discussing the question eighteen months 
ago, I ventured to state that, " in the case of one Public 
Library in a considerable Massachusetts city I had been 
led to conclude, as the result of examination and some- 
what careful inquiry, that the copy of the ^ Decline and 
Fall ' on its shelves, had, in over thirty years, not once 
been consecutively read through by a single individual." 
I have since made further and more careful inquiry on 
this point from other, and larger, though similar institu- 
tions, and the inference I then drew has been confirmed 
and generalized. I have also sought information as to 
the demand for historical literature, and the tendency and 
character of the reading so far as it could be ascertained, 
or approximately inferred. I have submitted my list of 
historical writers, and inquired as to the call for them. 
Suggestive in all respects, the results have, in some, been 
little less than startling. Take for instance popularity, 
and let me recur to Macaulay and Carlyle. I have spoken 
of the two as great masters in historical composition, — 
comparing them in their field to Turner and Millet in the 
field of art. Like Turner and Millet, they influenced to 



46 

a marked extent a whole generation of workers that en- 
sued. To such an extent did they influence it that a 
scholastic reaction against them set in, — a reaction as 
distinct as it was strong. Nevertheless, in spite of that 
reaction, to what extent did the master retain his popular 
hold ? I admit that my astonishment was great when I 
learned that between 1880, more than twenty years after 
his death, and 1900, besides innumerable editions issued 
on both sides of the Atlantic, the authorized London 
publishers of Macaulay had sold in two shapes only, — 
and they appear in many other shapes, — 80,000 copies 
of his History and 90,000 of his Miscellanies. Of 
Carlyle and the call for his writings I could gather no 
such specific particulars ; but, in reply to my inquiries, I 
was generally advised that, while the English demand had 
been large, there was no considerable American publish- 
ing house which had not brought out partial or complete 
editions of his works. They also were referred to as 
" innumerable." ^ In other words, when a generation that 
knew them not had passed away, the works of the two 
great masters of historical literary form in our day sold 
beyond all compare with the productions of any of the 
living writers most in vogue ; and this while the profes- 
sorial dry-as-dust reaction against those masters was in 
fullest swinff. 

With a vast amount of material unused,^ and much still 

^ At least twenty (20) American publishing houses have brought out 
complete editions of Macaulay, both his Miscellanies and the History of 
England. Many of these editions have been expensive, and they seem 
uniformly to have met with a ready demand. Almost every American 
publishing house of any note has brought out editions of some of the 
Essays. The same is, to a less extent, true of Carlyle. Seven (7) houses 
have brought out complete editions of his works ; while three (3) others 
have put on the market imported editions, bearing an American imprint. 
Separate editions of the more popular of his writings — some cheap, others 
de luxe — have been brought out by nearly every American publishing con- 
cern. 

* See Appendix D, p. 59. 



47 

unsaid, I propose, in concluding, to trespass still further 
on your patience while I draw a lesson to which the 
first portion of my discourse will contribute not less 
than the second. A great, as well as a very volumi- 
nous, recent historical writer has coined the apothegm, 
— *• History is past politics, and politics are present 
History." The proposition is one I do not now pro- 
pose to discuss, except to suggest that, however it may 
have been heretofore, what is known as politics will be 
but a part, and by no means the most important part, of 
the history of the future. The historian will look deeper. 
It was President Lincoln who said in one of the few im- 
mortal utterances of the century, — an utterance, be it 
also observed, hmited to two hundred and fifty words, — 
that this, our, nation was " conceived in liberty, and 
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal;" and that it was for us highly to resolve "that 
government of the people, by the people, for the people, 
should not perish from the earth." It was James Russell 
Lowell, who, when asked in Paris by the historian Guizot 
many years since, how long the Republic of the United 
States might reasonably be expected to endure, happily 
replied, — " So long as the ideas of its founders continue 
dominant." In the first place, I hold it not unsafe to 
say that, looking forward into a future not now remote, 
the mission of the Republic and the ideas of the founders 
will more especially rest in the hands of those agricultural 
communities of the Northwest, where great aggregations 
of a civic populace are few, and the principles of natural 
selection have had the fullest and the freest play in the 
formation of the race. Such is Wisconsin ; such Iowa ; 
such Minnesota. In their hands, and in the hands of 
communities hke them, will rest the ark of our covenant. 
In the next place, for the use and future behoof of 
those communities I hold that the careful and intelligent 
reading of the historical lessons of the past is all im- 



48 

portant. Without that reading, and a constant emphasis 
laid upon its lessons, the nature of that mission and those 
ideas to which Lincoln and Lowell alluded cannot be 
kept fresh in mind. This institution I accordingly regard 
as the most precious of all Wisconsin's endowments of 
education. It should be the sheet anchor by which, 
amid the storms and turbulence of a tempestuous future, 
the ship of State will be anchored to the firm holding- 
ground of tradition. It is to further this result that 
I to-day make appeal to the historian of the future. 
His, in this community, is a great and important mis- 
sion ; a mission which he will not fulfil unless he to a 
large extent frees himself from the trammels of the 
past, and rises to an equality with the occasion. He 
must be a prophet and a poet, as well as an investigator 
and an annalist. He must cut loose from many of the 
models and most of the precedents of the immediate past, 
and the educational precepts now so commonly in vogue. 
He must perplex the modern college professor by assert- 
ing that soundness is not always and of necessity dull, 
and that even intellectual sobriety may be carried to an 
excess. Not only is it possible for a writer to combine 
learning and accuracy with vivacity, but to be read and 
to be popular should not in the eyes of the judicious be 
a species of stigma. Historical research may, on the 
other hand, result in a mere lumber of learning ; and, 
even in the portrayal of the sequence of events, it is to 
a man's credit that he should strive to see things from 
the point of view of an artist, rather than, looking with 
the dull eye of a mechanic, seek to measure them with 
the mechanic's twelve-inch rule. I confess myself weary 
of those reactionary influences amid which of late we 
have lived. I distinctly look back with regret to that 
more spiritual and more confident time when we of the 
generation now passing from the stage drew our inspi- 
ration from prophets, and not from laboratories. So 



49 

to-day I make bold to maintain that the greatest bene- 
factor America could have — far more immediately influ- 
ential than any possible President or Senator or peripa- 
tetic political practitioner, as well as infinitely more so 
in a remote future — would be some historical writer, 
occupying perhaps a chair here at Madison, who would 
in speech and book explain and expound, as they could 
be explained and expounded, the lessons of American 
history and the fundamental principles of American his- 
torical faith. 

It was Macaulay who made his boast that, disregard- 
ing the traditions which constituted what he contemptu- 
ously termed " the dignity of history," he would set forth 
England's story in so attractive a form that his volumes 
should displace the last novel from the work-table of the 
London society girl. And he did it. It is but the other 
day that an American naval officer suddenly appeared in 
the field of historical literature, and, by two volumes, 
sensibly modified the policy of nations. Here are pre- 
cept and example. To accomplish similar results should, 
I hold, be the ambition of the American historian. 
Popularity he should court as a necessary means to an 
end ; and that he should attain popularity, he must 
study the art of presentation as much and as thought- 
fully as he delves amid the original material of history. 
Becoming more of an artist, rhetorician and philosopher 
than he now is, he must be less of a pedant and color- 
less investigator. In a word, going back to Moses, 
Thucydides and Herodotus; Tacitus, Gibbon and Vol- 
taire ; Niebuhr, Macaulay, Carlyle, Buckle, Green, 
Mommsen and Froude, he must study their systems, and, 
avoiding the mistakes into which they fell, thoughtfully 
accommodating himself to the conditions of the present, 
he must prepare to fulfil the mission before him. He 
will then in time devise what is so greatly needed for our 
political life, the distinctively American historical method 



60 

of the future. Of this we have as yet had hardly the 
promise, and that only recently through the pages of 
Fiske and Mahan ; and I cannot help surmising that it is 
to some Eastern seed planted here in the freer environ- 
ment of the more fruitful West that we must look for its 
ultimate realization. 



APPENDIX, 
A. 

The fact that the southern portion of the State of Wisconsin was 
formerly, in a certain sense at least, a portion of Massachusetts, is, 
even historically, more curious than interesting or valuable. In re- 
gard to it the following extracts are from a Report of its Council 
made to the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, October 21, 
1890,^ by Samuel A. Green, than whom, on a matter of this sort con- 
nected with Massachusetts history, there is no higher living authority. 

" The Colonial Charter of Massachusetts Bay, granted by Charles 
I., under date of March 4, 1628-9, gave to the Governor and other 
representatives of the Massachusetts Company, on certain conditions, 
all the territory lying between an easterly and westerly line running 
three miles north of any part of the Merrimack River, and extending 
from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, and a similar parallel line run- 
ning south of any part of the Charles River." 

The exact words of the original instrument, bearing on the matter 
under discussion, were : — 

" AU that parte of Newe England in America which lyes and ex- 
tendes betweene a great river there coihonlie called Monomack river, 
alias Merrimack river, and a certen other river there called Charles 
river, being in the bottome of a certen bay there comonlie called Mas- 
sachusetts, alias Mattachusetts, alias Massatusetts bay : . . . And also 
all those lands and hereditaments whatsoever which lye and be within 
the space of three English myles to the northward of the saide river 
called Monomack, alias Merryma«k, or to the norward of any and 
every parte thereof, and all landes and hereditaments whatsoever, lye- 
ing within the lymitts aforesaide, north and south, in latitude and 
bredth, and in length and longitude, of and witliin all the bredth 
aforesaide, throughout the mayne landes there from the Atlantick and 
westerne sea and ocean on the east parte, to the south sea on the west 
parte : " ' 

" Without attempting to trace in detail, from the time of the Cabots 
to the days of the Charter, the continuity of the English title to this 
transcontinental strip of territory, it is enough to know that the pre- 
cedents and usages of that period gave to Great Britain, in theory at 
^ Proceedings (New Series), vol. vii. pp. 11-32. 



62 

least, undisputed sway over the region, and forged every link in the 
chain of authority and sovereignty." 

" At that time it was supposed that America was a narrow strip of 
land, — perhaps an arm of the continent of Asia, — and that the dis- 
tance across from ocean to ocean was comparatively short. It was 
then known that the Isthmus of Darien was narrow, and it was there- 
fore incorrectly presumed that the whole continent also was narrow." 

'' By later explorations this strip of territory has heen lengthened 
out into a belt three thousand miles long. It crosses a continent, and 
includes witliin its limits various large towns of the United States. 
The cities of Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, and Mil- 
waukee all he within the zone. There have been many social and 
commercial ties between the capital of New England and these sev- 
eral municipalities, but in comparison with another bond they are of 
recent date, as the ground on which they stand was granted to the 
Massachusetts Company by the Charter of Charles I., moret han two 
hundred and sixty years ago." 

" After the lapse of some years the settlers took steps to find out the 
territorial boundaries of the Colony on the north in order to estabUsh 
the limits of their jurisdictional authority. To this end at an early 
day a Commission was appointed by the General Court, composed of 
Captain Simon WiUard and Captain Edward Johnson, two of the 
foremost men in the Colony at that time." 

" It wiU be seen that the Commissioners were empowered, under the 
order, to engage ' such Artists & other Assistants,' as were needed 
for the purpose. In early days a surveyor was called an artist, and in 
old records the word is often found with that meaning. Under the 
authority thus given, the Commissioners employed Sergeant John 
Sherman, of Watertown, and Jonathan Ince, of Cambridge, to join 
the party and do the scientific work of the expedition." 

" In October, 1652, the Commissioners made a return to the Gen- 
eral Court, giving the result of their labors, and including the affida- 
vits of the two surA'eyors. According to this report they fixed upon a 
place then called by the Indians Aquedahtan as the head of the Merri- 
mack river. By due observation they found the latitude of tlfis spot 
to be 43° 40' 12" ; and the northern limit of the patent was three 
miles north of tliis pomt." 

An extension of the northern limit thus indicated would, crossing 



53 

Lake Michigan, run west, from a point about three miles south of 
Sheboygan, through Fond du Lac, Green Lake and Marquette coun- 
ties, some six miles north of their southern boundaries, thus bisecting 
Wisconsin. 

B. 

The full record of J. Q. Adams's utterances on this most important 
subject has never been made up. (See Works of Charles Sumner, 
vol. vi. pp. 19-23 ; vol. vii. p. 142.) Historically speaking, it is of 
exceptional significance; and, accordingly, for convenience of refer- 
ence, a partial record is here presented. 

In 1836, Mr. Adams rejiresented in Congress what was then the 
Massachusetts " Plymouth " district. In April of that year the issue, 
which, just twenty-five years later, was to result in overt civil war, 
was fast assuming shape ; for, on the 21st of the month, the battle of 
San Jacinto was fought, resulting immediately in the independence 
of Texas, and more remotely in its annexation to the United States 
and the consequent war of spoliation (1846-48) with Mexico. At the 
same time petitions in great number were pouring into Congress from 
the Northern States asking for the abolition of slavery, and the prohi- 
bition of the domestic slave trade, in the District of Columbia ; the 
admission into the Union of Arkansas, with a constitution recognizing 
slavery, was also under consideration. In the course of a long per- 
sonal letter dated April 4th, 1836, written to the Hon. Solomon Lin- 
coln, of Hingham, a prominent constituent of his, Mr. Adams made 
the following incidental reference to the whole subject, indicative of 
the degree to which the question of martial law as a possible factor 
in the solution of the problem then occupied his mind : — 

" The new pretensions of the Slave representation in Congress, of 
a right to refuse to receive Petitions, and that Congress have no Con- 
stitutional power to abolish slavery or the slave trade in the District 
of Columbia forced upon me so much of the discussion as I did take 
upon me, but in which you are well aware I did not and could not 
speak a tenth part of my mind. I did not, for example, start the 
question whether by the Law of God and of Nature man can hold 
property, hereditary property in man — I did not start the question 
whether in the event of a servile insurrection and War, Congress 
would not have complete, unlimited control over the whole subject of 
slavery even to the emancipation of all the slaves in the State where 
such insurrection should break out, and for the suppression of which 
the freemen of Plymouth and Norfolk Counties, Massachusetts, should 
be called by Acts of Congress to pour out their treasures and to shed 
their blood. Had I spoken my mind on those two points the sturdi- 
est of the abolitionists would have disavowed the sentiments of their 
champion." 



64 

A little more than seven weeks after thus writing, Mr. Adams made 
the following entries in his diary : — 

May 25th. — " At the House, the motion of Rohertson, to recommit 
Pinckney's slavery report, with instructions to report a resolution de- 
claring that Congress has no constitutional authority to abolish slavery 
in the District of Columbia, as an amendment to the motion for print- 
ing an extra number of the report, was first considered. Robertson 
finished his speech, which was vehement. . . . 

" Immediately after the conclusion of Robertson's speech I ad- 
dressed the Speaker, but he gave the floor to Owens, of Georgia, one 
of the signing members of the committee, who moved the previous 
question, and refused to withdraw it. It was seconded and carried, 
by yeas and nays. . . . 

" The hour of one came, and the order of the day was called — a 
joint resolution from the Senate, authorizing the President to cause 
rations to be furnished to suffering fugitives from Indian hostilities in 
Alabama and Georgia. Committee of the whole on the Union, and a 
debate of five hours, in which I made a speech of about an hour, 
wherein I opened the whole subject of the Mexican, Indian, negro, and 
English war." 

It was in the course of this speech that Mr. Adams first enunciated 
the principle of emancipation through martial law, exercised under the 
Constitution in time of war. He did so in the following passage : — 

" Mr. Chairman, are you ready for all these wars ? A Mexican 
war. A war with Great Britain if not with France ? A general In- 
dian war ? A servile war ? And, as an inevitable consequence of 
them all, a civil war ? For it must ultimately terminate in a war of 
colors as well as of races. And do you imagine that, while with your 
eyes open you are wilfully kindling, and then closing your eyes and 
blindly rushing into them ; do you imagine that while in the very nar 
ture of things, your own Southern and Southwestern States must be 
the Flanders of these complicated wars, the battlefield on which the last 
great battle must be fought between slavery and emancipation ; do you 
imagine that your Congress will have no constitutional authority to in- 
terfere with the institution of slavery in any way in the States of this 
Confederacy ? Sir, they must and wiU interfere with it — perhaps to 
sustain it by war ; perhaps to abolish it by treaties of peace ; and they 
wiU not only possess the constitutional power so to interfere, but they 
will be bound in duty to do it by the express provisions of the Consti- 
tution itself. From the instant that your slaveholding States become 
the theatre of war, civil, servile or foreign, from that instant the war 
powers of Congress extend to interference with the institution of slav- 
ery in every way in which it can be interfered with, from a claim of 
indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to the cession of the State 
burdened with slavery to a foreign power." 



65 

The following references to this speech are then found in the 
diary : — 

May 29th. — "I was occupied all the leisure of the day and even- 
ing in writing out for publication my speech made last Wednesday in 
the House of Representatives — one of the most hazardous that I ever 
made, and the reception of which, even by the people of my own dis- 
trict and State, is altogether uncertain." 

June 2d. — " My speech on the distribution of rations to the fugi- 
tives from Indian hostilities in Alabama and Georgia was published 
in the National Intelligencer of this morning, and a subscription paper 
was circulated in the House for printing it in a pamphlet, for which 
Gales told me there were twenty-five hundred copies ordered. Several 
members of the House of both parties spoke of it to me, some with 
strong dissent." 

June 19th. — " My speech on the rations comes back with echoes 
of thundering vituperation from the South and West, and with one 
universal shout of applause from the North and East. This is a cause 
upon which I am entering at the last stage of life, and with the cer- 
tainty that I cannot advance in it far ; my career must close, leaving 
the cause at the threshold. To open the way for others is all that I 
can do. The cause is good and great." 

So far as the record goes, the doctrine was not again propounded 
by Mr. Adams until 1841. On the 7th of June of that year he made 
a speech in the House of Representatives in support of a motion for the 
repeal of the Twenty-first Rule of the House, commonly known as 
" the Atherton Gag." Of this speech, no report exists ; but in the 
course of it he again enunciated the Martial Law theory of Emancipa- 
tion. The next day he was followed in debate by C. J. IngersoU, of 
Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, who 
took occasion to declare that what he had heard the day previous had 
made his " blood curdle with horror : '* — 

" Mr. Adams here rose in explanation, and said he did not say that 
in the event of a servile war of insurrection of slaves, the Constitution 
of the United States would be at an end. What he did say was this, 
that in the event of a servile war or insurrection of slaves, if the peo- 
ple of the free States were called irpon to suppress the insurrection, 
and to spend their blood and treasure in putting an end to the war 
— a war in which the distinguished Virginian, the author of the De- 
claration of Independence, had said that ' God has no attribute in 
favor of the master ' — then he would not say that Congress might 
not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States, and that, 
through the treaty-miaking power, universal emancipation might not 
be the result." 

The following year the contention was again discussed in the course 



56 

of the memorable debate on the " Haverhill Petition." Mr. Adams 
was then bitterly assailed by Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, and Thomas 
F. Marshall, of Kentucky. Mr. Adams at the time did not reply to 
them on this head ; but, on the 14th of the following April, occasion 
offered, and he then once more laid down the law on the subject, as 
he understood it, and as it was subsequently put in force : — 

" I would leave that institution to the exclusive consideration and 
management of the States more pecuharly interested in it, just as long 
as they can keep within their own bounds. So far I admit that Con- 
gress has no power to meddle with it. As long as they do not step out 
of their own bounds, and do not put the question to the people of the 
United States, whose peace, welfare and happiness are all at stake, 
so long I will agree to leave them to themselves. But when a member 
from a free State brings forward certain resolutions, for which, in- 
stead of reasoning to disprove his positions, you vote a censure upon 
him, and that without hearing, it is quite another affair. At the time 
this was done I said that, as far as I could understand the resolutions 
proposed by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Giddings), there were 
some of them for which I was ready to vote, and some which I must 
vote against ; and I will now tell this House, my constituents, and the 
world of mankind, that the resolution against which I should have 
voted was that in which he declares that what are called the slave 
, States have the exclusive right of consultation on the subject of slav- 
ery. For that resolution I never would vote, because I believe that it 
lis not just, and does not contain constitutional doctrine. I believe that 
.so long as the slave States are able to sustain their institutions with- 
(out going abroad or calling upon other parts of the Union to aid them 
or act on the subject, so long I will consent never to interfere. 

" I have said this, and I repeat it ; but if they come to the free States 
and say to them you must help us to keep down our slaves, you must 
aid us in an insurrection and a civil war, then I say that with that 
call comes a full and plenary power to this House and to the Senate 
over the whole subject. It is a war power. I say it is a war power, 
and when your country is actually in war, whether it be a war of in- 
vasion or a war of insurrection. Congress has power to carry on the 
war, and must cany it on according to the laws of war ; and by the 
laws of war an invaded country has all its laws and municipal institu- 
tions swept by the board, and martial law takes the place of them. 
Tliis power in Congress has, perhaps, never been called into exercise 
under the present Constitution of the United States. But when the 
laws of war are in force, what, I ask, is one of those laws ? It is this : 
that when a country is invaded, and two hostile armies are set in mar- 
tial array, the commanders of both armies have power to emancipate 
all the slaves in the invaded territory. Nor is this a mere theoretic 



57 

statement. The history of South America shows that the doctrine 
has been carried into practical execution within the last thirty years. 
Slavery was aboUshed in Colombia, first, by the Spanish General, Mo- 
rillo, and, secondly, by the American General, Bolivar. It was abol- 
ished by virtue of a military command given at the head of the army, 
and its abolition continues to be law to this day. It was abohshed by 
the laws of war, and not by municipal enactments ; the power was 
exercised by military commanders, under insti'uctions, of course, from 
their respective Governments. And here I recur again to the ex- 
ample of General Jackson. What are you now about in Congress ? 
You are passing a grant to refund to General Jackson the amount of 
a certain fine imposed upon him by a Judge under the laws of the 
State of Louisiana. You are going to refund him the money, with 
interest ; and this you are going to do because the imposition of the 
fine was unjust. And why was it unjust ? Because General Jackson 
was acting under the laws of war, and because the moment you place 
a military commander in a district wliich is the theatre of war, the 
laws of war apply to that district. . . . 

" I might furnish a thousand proofs to show that the pretensions of 
gentlemen to the sanctity of their municipal institutions under a state 
of actual invasion and of actual war, whether servile, civil, or foreign, 
is wholly unfounded, and that the laws of war do, in aU such cases, take 
the precedence. I lay this down as the law of nations. I say that the 
military authority takes for the time the place of all municipal insti- 
tutions, and slavery among the rest ; and that, under that state of 
things, so far from its being true that the States where slavery exists 
have the exclusive management of the subject, not only the President 
of the United States but the commander of the army has power to 
order the universal emancipation of the slaves. I have given here more 
in detail a principle which I have asserted on this floor before now, 
and of which I have no more doubt, than that you. Sir, occupy that 
Chair. I give it in its development, in order that any gentleman from 
any part of the Union may, if he thinks proper, deny the truth of the 
position, and may maintain his denial ; not by indignation, not by pas- 
sion and fury, but by sound and sober reasoning from the laws of na- 
tions and the laws of war. And if my position can be answered and 
refuted, I shall receive the refutation with pleasure ; I shall be glad 
to listen to reason, aside, as I say, from indignation and passion. And 
if, by the force of reasoning, my understanding can be convinced, I 
here pledge myself to recant what I have asserted. 

" Let my position be answered ; let me be told, let my constituents 
be told, the people of my State be told, — a State whose soil tolerates 
not the foot of a slave, — that they are bound by the Constitution to a 
long and toilsome march under burning summer suns and a deadly 



58 

Southern clime for the suppression of a servile war ; that they are 
bound to leave their bodies to rot upon the sands of Carolina, to leave 
their wives and their children orphans ; that those who cannot march 
are bound to pour out their treasures while their sons or brothers are 
pouring out their blood to suppress a servile, combined with a civil or 
a foreign war, and yet that there exists no power beyond the limits of 
the slave State where such war is raging to emancipate the slaves. I 
say, let this be proved — I am open to conviction ; but till that convic- 
tion comes I put it forth not as a dictate of feeling, but as a settled 
maxim of the laws of nations, that in such a case the military super- 
sedes the civil power." 

The only comment on this utterance made by Mr. Adams in his 
diary was the following : — " My speech of this day stung the slave- 
oeraey to madness." 

Here the proposition rested until 1861, when the course of events 
brought into forcible application the principles abstractly enimciated 
twenty years before by Mr. Adams. 

a 

Owing to the hold which the Hebrew theology has obtained on all 
modern thought, the standards of judgment usually applied to histori- 
cal characters have not been applied to Moses. He has been treated 
as exceptional. Meanwliile, judged by those standards, it may not 
unfairly be questioned whether Moses was not the most many-sided 
human being of whom any record exists, and the one whose influence 
on the history of the race has been most far-reaching. He constitutes 
almost a class by himself, in that he seems to have been equally great 
as a philosopher, a law-giver, a theologist, a poet, a soldier, an executive 
magistrate and an historian. Compare him, for instance, with Julius 
Cjesar, also a many-sided man, whose influence over human events is 
perceptible even to the present time. A consummate military com- 
mander and poUtical organizer, Caesar wrote his Commentaries. As 
a strategist he may have been superior to Moses ; and yet it is very 
questionable whether he ever executed a more brilliant or successful 
movement than the march out of Egypt or the passage of the Red 
Sea. The campaigns of the Israelites seem to have been uniformly 
both planned and carried out in a very masterly way. On the other 
hand, as a literary product the De BeUo Gallico is in no way compar- 
able to Exodus. As a philosopher, the authority of him who wrote 
the book of Genesis was undisputed until well into the present century, 
and is even now implicitly accepted by the great mass of those call- 
ing themselves Christians. The binding character of the decalogue is 
still recognized, and it lies at the basis of modern legislation. As a 



59 

poet, Homer distinctly pales before the Israelite ; while both Dante 
and Milton drew from him their inspiration. There is no epic which 
in sublimity of movement as well as human interest compares with the 
books of Moses. As a chief magistrate, the Hebrew moulded, or at 
least left his imprint, on a race which has proved the most marked 
and persistent in tyj^e the earth has yet produced. Jesus Christ was 
of it. Finally, as an historian, while the learning and judgment of 
Moses would not stand the test of modern criticism, his narrative was 
accepted as incontrovertible until within the memory of those now Uv- 
ing, and has passed into common speech. 

What other man in all recorded history presents such a singular and 
varied record ? 

D. 

In the address delivered at the opening of the Fenway Building of 
the Massachusetts Historical Society, in April, 1899, occurred the 
following : — 

" It would be very interesting to know how many young persons now 
read Gibbon through as he was read by our fathers, or even by ourselves 
who grew up in ' the fifties.' Accurate information on such a point is not 
attainable ; but in the case of one public library in a considerable Massa- 
chusetts city I have been led to conclude as the result of examination and 
somewhat careful inquiry, that the copy of the ' Decline and Fall ' on its 
shelves has, in over thirty years, not once been consecutively read through 
by a single individual. That it is bought as one of those ' books no gentle- 
man's library should be without,' I know, not only from personal acquaint- 
ance with many such, but because new editions from time to time appear, 
and the booksellers always have it ' in stock ; ' that it is dipped into here 
and there, and more or less, I do not doubt ; but that it is now largely or 
systematically read by young people of the coming generation, I greatly 
question." 

This passage was at the time remarked upon, and subsequently led 
to a considerable correspondence. In the course of that correspond- 
ence, as occasion offered, I endeavored further to inform myself, 
through publishers, booksellers, librarians, instructors and students. 
To reach any reaUy valuable results such an inquiry would, of course, 
have to cover a broad field and be systematically conducted. This 
was out of my power. None the less the questions involved are of 
moment, and a thorough investigation by a competent and unpreju- 
diced person, with abundance of time at his disposal, could hardly 
fail to be suggestive, and, not improbably, might reveal some quite 
unexpected conditions, educational as well as popular. While the cor- 
respondence carried on by me was desultory, as weU as limited, some 
of the points developed by it are more or less noteworthy and may 



60 

incite others to a better arranged inquiry. I, therefore, give space to 
them. 

From publishing firms and booksellers not much of value could be 
obtained. The former are, not unnaturally, more or less reticent on 
matters connected with their business ; while the booksellers not only 
run into special lines, but their trade is subject to local conditions. 
With both, also, the question of copyright has to be taken into con- 
sideration. So far as conclusions could be drawn from information 
derived from these sources, they would seem generally to be that the 
demand for books of an historical character has increased largely and 
is still increasing, and that for both the more expensive and the cheaper 
editions ; but there is nothing indicative of a special or disproportion- 
ate increase in the case of history as compared with other branches of 
literature. Among what may be called the standard English and 
American writers, the demand is for the writings of Gibbon, Macau- 
lay, Carlyle and Green ; and for those of Prescott, Motley and Fiske. 
In Boston it seems of late to be somewhat in the following propor- 
tions : Green 150, Macaulay 100, Carlyle and Gibbon 75, Prescott 
50, Motley 30. Text-books and what may be called the ephemeral 
historical writings are not taken into consideration. Taking the Eng- 
lish-speaking public in aU parts of the world as a whole, Macaulay 
and Carlyle would seem to be the two standard historical writers in- 
comparably most in vogue. Even in America there have been numer- 
ous editions of the works of both of these writers to single editions of 
American works of a similar character. For Gibbon alone of the 
older writers does there seem to be any active demand. One feature 
in the demand is noticeable. The readers of history seem largely to 
buy and own the copies they use. The public libraries will alone ab- 
sorb full editions of any new work ; but, of the standard writers, they 
as a rule buy the better and more expensive impressions, while the great 
mass of cheap reprints and second-hand copies is absorbed by a vast 
reading public, which formerly did not exist at all and of which little 
is now known. Its demand is, however, on the lines indicated. 

The fact just referred to, that what may be termed the sustained 
readers of history, or those equal to continuous historical reading, 
prefer to own their own copies of the books they read, and to a large 
extent contrive to do so either through the bargain-stand or the cheap 
reprint, has a very close bearing on the inferences to be drawn from 
the statistics and experience of the public libraries. These agencies 
are aU modern, and their influence has not yet had time in which fully 
to assert itself. A development of the last half century, they are yet 
in the formative, or plastic, state. As regards them and their influ- 
ence on the reading of historical works, further inquiry and corre- 
spondence have led to a revisal of first impressions. As respects his- 



61 

torical reading and study now going on, I gravely doubt whether any 
safe inferences can be drawn from this source. As a rule about five 
(5) per cent, of the books called for at the desks of our public libra- 
ries are classified as historical ; but, on the other hand, further inves- 
tigation leads me to infer that those who resort to the public libraries 
for books of tliis sort do so as a rule either educationally, that is, in 
connection with school studies, or they are ephemeral readers. This 
appears clearly on examination in a public library of almost any his- 
torical work in several volumes. The first will almost invariably bear 
marks of heavy handling, and will probably have been sent to the 
binder ; the succeeding volumes will show fewer and fewer signs of 
use ; while the closing volumes, except the index volume, will be quite 
fresh. People who read such works thi-ough with profit or pleasure 
probably own them. Observation from the Public Library point of 
view is, therefore, on this subject, apt to be deceptive. 

For instance, an official of one of the largest and most extensively 
used public libraries in the country writes me, speaking of Gibbon, 
" It is my opinion that a fair percentage of those who undertake Gib- 
bon put the job through. You can draw about any inference you 
please on the relative place Gibbon now holds." Another, almost 
equally well placed from the same point of observation, has written to 
me, " There is no doubt that the fact [you observe] as to the con- 
dition of the several volumes of Gibbon on the shelves of the PubUc 
Library of Quincy could be verified by observation in this library, 
and, in all probability, in most other public libraries in this country." 
My own inference now is that the people who read " The Decline 
and Fall," — and they are many, — own it. The copies in the pubHc 
libraries are used for experimental purposes, or for topical reference. 

On the general subject, I find many suggestive paragraphs in my 
Public Librarian correspondence. The following for instance : — 

" The fact of the matter is that very few people nowadays have the 
time and patience to read a prolix history through by course, or even to 
wade through the novels which were constructed with so great elaboration 
of exciting incident for the edification of our grandfathers. It is our ex- 
perience that Gibbon and Hallam and Lingard and Hume and Bancroft are 
never read entire. It may be said that the attempt is seldom if ever made 
to do so. There is sometimes an effort to master Macanlay, or Carlyle, or 
Motley, or Prescott ; but it is evident that this is too often with flagging 
interest. The historical writings of Francis Parkman and John Fiske are 
in great popular demand. These are so broken up into separate topics that 
the task set before the reader does not appear formidable, and when he has 
read up on one topic he is quite likely to be lured by the interesting narrative 
and the fascinating style into a continuance through other works of the same 
author. Captain Mahan's books are much read, as are also Green's shorter 
history and McCarthy's ' History of our own Times,' and the recent his- 
tories of Schouler and Khodes. 



62 

" Though there is less reading by course of voluminous histories than for- 
merly, the study of history was never more popular. The tendency of the 
times is toward condensation. We want our facts in a nutshell ; we cannot 
spend time over unimportant details ; the historian is expected to separate 
the chaff from the grain. So we have numerous condensed histories and 
biographies, some of which are excellent, though some show too clearly the 
characteristic of having been made-to-order at the expense of the publisher. 
But the fact that the publishers find them profitable is good evidence that 
such books are the kind which many persons are buying. 

" Much of the historical reading with which we come into contact in this 
library is by topic, under the guidance of clubs and instructors, and therefore 
systematic." 

" I don't see how you can hope to induce the average person of moderate 
intelligence to do more than read the newspapers and a few monthly maga- 
zines in these days. History does not come to him any longer through the 
volume ; it comes to him through the morning paper, as it never did before. 
Historians are still a little too much inclined to write histories in the old 
style ; even John Fiske does, it would seem. Whereas entirely new condi- 
tions of life and knowledge would seem to call for a new kind of history, 
what kind I cannot tell you." 

" I doubt if ten undergraduates at Yale have read Gibbon during the past 
five years ; many, however, have read Carlyle's ' Frederick,' and more his 
' French Revolution.* " 

" I find myself more and more astonished at the narrowing range of read- 
ing. It may be that I don't see the whole thing or that I form wrong esti- 
mates, but I am in accord with the more observing of my associates when I 
tell you that the reading habits of the ' average ' reader are not desultory — 
I wish they were — but sharply defined and within most contracted limits. 
Let me specify in the matter of United States History. When I was a 
youngster we used to have large plans for reading Bancroft, or Hildreth, 
or the biographies of famous Americans. To-day it is noticeable that the 
generation recently graduated from the Public Schools seems to have im- 
bibed no general taste for reading — and does not seek to expand its small 
acquirements beyond a given point. For several years, off and on, I have 
been the civil service examiner for this Library, and I can assert that the 
only knowledge of American History, or worse, of American historical 
writings, is confined to the work of one Montgomery, of whom, I dare say, 
you never heard. Very rarely a young reader knows of Fiske, more rarely 
of Higginson — once in a while of Barnes, a new name to you, I fancy. But 
of the important names, simply nothing. What is true in these examina- 
tion papers, is true also of the people who come to read. They largely 
confine themselves to this sort of historical reading. 

" In the past few years there has also been a gradual restriction of the 
limits of literary tastes. Children, in our schools, and I suppose the ten- 
dency comes from the West, are fed on very limited pap. Longfellow, 
Whittier, and a few others are the only names known to them — and there 
seems to be no encouragement of a general taste. So far as we then are 



63 

able to discern, everything is ' patriotic ' — patriotic speeches, poems, his- 
tory, one might hazard the statement that in the ' nature studies * so popular 
now, — what we used to call ' natural history ' — the bugs, beetles, butter- 
flies and flowers must be patriotic too. This all may seem exaggerated 
and fanciful, but I assure you that it is not to us. We trace it to a sort of 
spurious conception of specialization among teachers and especially among 
school committees. Whatever the cause, I submit to you that it is a de- 
pressing fact that children should grow up with a particular knowledge of 
Longfellow and Mr. Montgomery's history, and not the least acquaintance 
with the general works of literature and history, at least of America and 
England. This is one reason why Gibbon is not read more — nobody hears 
about him to-day — or of Grote, or Mommsen, — though Macaulay still has 
his readers." 

The truth seems to be that, so far as the general public is concerned, 
— that largest portion of the body politic which is finally influenced by 
its secretions, — no conclusions are reliable the inductions to which do 
not include the Sunday newspaper and the periodical. These circu- 
late by the million, and are most carefully shaped to meet the demand 
of the day. They all give much space to historical topics, dealing 
with them in popular form. Formerly, neither the medium nor the 
method existed. Their function and influence have never been ade- 
quately investigated. As a literature, besides creating a new field of 
enormous size, the periodical and the Sunday paper have, as leisure 
reading, largely superseded the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson 
Crusoe and aU literature of that class. 

Turning now to the educational institutions, — especially those of 
the more advanced grade, — and the student class, it would, I think, 
be found that a great change has taken place in recent years. Not 
only have new methods been introduced, but a branch of education 
has been called into being. Formerly, — that is prior to thirty years 
ago, — history was taught in our colleges merely as a subject concern- 
ing the authors and leading facts of which a so-called educated man 
should have some knowledge ; it is now taught as, at once, a science 
and a philosophy. Approached in this way by a newly created race 
of instructors, it naturally and almost necessarily runs into vagaries, — 
what may best be described as educational " fads." The original re- 
search, topical, period and realistic methods seem to be those now most 
in vogue. As intimated in the text, the artistic side is in disrepute, 
while little or no attention is paid to history as literature. It has the 
aspect of a revival on a more scientific basis of Carlyle's Dr. Dryasdust 
dispensation, and can hardly be considered inspiring. The following 
extracts from letters I have received throw light on this subject : — 

" I have nowadays under my instruction only such seniors and graduates 
of and as elect my courses, perhaps sixty or seventy individ- 



'64 

uals each year. Among these I should suspect that perhaps one in ten 
might have read Carlyle's ' Revolution.' I should be astonished to find 
that one in twenty had read even half of Macaulay or Gibbon, or one in fifty 
Bancroft. As for ' Frederick the Great,' that would be as rarely perused 
as Augustine's ' City of God.' One in five might know something of Park- 
man, Fiske and Mahan, on account of their general popularity, however, 
rather than any stimulus due to college work. Green's book enjoys a 
greater popularity, I should presume, than any of the others. 

" I will venture to add the following reflections in extenuation of what 
you appear to deem an indication of a reluctance on the part of the present 
generation to apply themselves patiently to prolonged and serious tasks. It 
is undoubtedly true that the methods of instruction in our more conspicuous 
institutions of learning militate against ' the habit of steady, or " course " his- 
torical reading,' but I should be very loath to add, as you do, ' and sustained 
thought,' among our students. There is indeed little encouragement to read 
long works through, and certainly there is little tendency to extol any writer 
as a prophet. But it is not impossible that the causes of the discredit into 
which the older method has fallen may indicate after all increasing insight 
and discrimination. These causes appear to me to be, first, a growing ten- 
dency to a broader and more sympathetic method of dealing with the past. 
We are no longer chiefly interested in political events, nor are the best writ- 
ers of to-day guilty of the Tendenz so apparent in the partisan treatments 
of Gibbon, Hume, Prescott, Macaulay and Motley. 

" The broader conception of history leads, secondly, to a topical treatment 
of the subject ; students turn to special rather than general works of refer- 
ence. An advanced student is taught to turn often to a monograph or the 
most recent edition of a technical encyclopaedia rather than to so-called 
' standard ' general treatments." 

" Personally, I feel that we shall be able sometime to combine the advan- 
tages both of form and readableness with the requirements of scientific truth 
and relevancy." 

" I should say that the studious habit of the men runs rather to topical 
than to course reading ; and that, outside the range of their fixed studies, 
they take their pleasure from poetry and fiction rather than from the histo- 
rians. I should say that such general historical reading as I remember to 
have been the delight of my own undergraduate (1875-9) days is now less 
common than it used to be. 

" The tendency is decidedly towards ' other and more recent methods.' 
Macaulay and Carlyle are too much decried in the classroom. Even Green 
is looked upon askance as a bit too ' literary,' I suspect ; and the men who 
would be scholars are sternly bidden to the methods of colorless investi- 
gators. Let us pray that we shall some day come to a sane balance in these 
matters, and not start young historians copying false standards of either 
extreme." 

" I am nearly certain that the average undergraduate who has anything 
to do with historical electives in the more important colleges now reads in a 
year more history than did the average undergraduate of a generation ago. 



65 

But the methods of instruction now employed make it likely that he reads 
chapters or portions of books, reads with a view to getting various lights 
upon particular transactions or episodes of history, rather than to read con- 
secutively through works comprising several volumes each. 

" I am sure that the average undergraduate has not less patience or grit 
than the average undergraduate of my time. I think he works more ; but 
he works in a different manner. I have taken counsel chiefly, in respect to 
your questions, of our assistant librarian, who remembers pretty well what 
books are taken out from the library. He knows no recent instance of a 
student having read through Gibbon's * Decline and Fall.' Carlyle's ' Fred- 
erick the Great ' has recently been attempted by one or two, but not com- 
pleted. Carlyle's ' French Revolution ' has been a good deal read. Of a 
consecutive reading of Bancroft he remembers no instance. Some have 
read through Motley's ' Dutch Republic' Probably no one has also gone 
through his ' History of the United Netherlands.' John Fiske's writings 
are much in demand. 

" I believe you would find very few college libraries in which the last 
volume of Gibbon showed signs of having been much used at any period, 
though Vol. I. is often worn out. 

" It is not the first time that the question has arisen in my mind whether 
our students ought not to-day to be given the opportunity to do more read- 
ing that is not positively required. But I presume that I shall answer the 
question, as I have always answered it before, by concluding that it is a 
better plan to make sure that all the students do enough work and, toward 
that end, to fill up the time of all, even of those who, without constraint, 
would read enough." 

" The habit of reading practised by university students in history to-day 
is that of topical comparison — or at least (if the student or the references 
be at fault) topical cumulation. Thus in the last decade a considerable num- 
ber of pamphlets of references on American history have been published, 
doing on a small scale what the ' Guide ' of Professors Channing and Hart 
does on a larger one. Judging from these guides, and my own experience 
and observation, I should say that this method of topical analysis and refer- 
ences is the method used at present not only in universities but in colleges 
and larger high schools. A generation ago, doubtless, a student was thrown 
upon the text-book, recitation system ; but if he were ambitious, then he 
would obtain his comparative view of history by reading — independent or 
required — in the classic works. To-day the comparative study is made 
easy, and is more or less required ; but it is applied peacemeal, not broadly: 
to individual topics, narrow points. The student reads his authors ' in little ' 
on each phase of a movement. In this way he rounds out each whole while 
details are fresh in mind — however he may lose in other respects. Now 
the fact is, that the topical reading is so exacting that a student has little 
time for the more generous reading of his authors. In other words, so far 
as his university courses are concerned, the chapter and page system is very 
largely forced upon a student. In view of such tendencies — which I have 
reason to believe are general and dominant — it would seem unlikely that 
the consecutive reading through of classics will again become more common. 
It could scarcely become less common." 



66 

" The modern method of setting men to work to answer problems or draw 
conclusions from various writers in a report or essay leads men to use a book 
for a purpose, and such jjart of it, therefore, as they want, rather than to sit 
down and read consecutively a single author until they have finished him. 
In addition, doubtless, the hurry, the scattered interests in things athletic 
and public, in college contests and exhibitions, in social ' functions,' the gen- 
eral lack of repose and of steady application also contribute to explain the 
situation. These latter excesses are lamentable ; but the modern method 
of historical study is in my opinion the right one, even were it not the only 
feasible one under modern conditions." 

" My experience and observation goes to show that steady or course his- 
torical reading among the undergraduates of the present day is avoided as 
far as possible. No more reading is done than is absolutely essential to 
satisfy the requirements of the instructor in the written weekly papers, and 
in the mid-year and final examinations. Furthermore, the amount of re- 
quired reading which the students actually do is regulated by their ambi- 
tions to obtain high, medium, or low grades in their history courses. Of 
course there are exceptions in the students who do far more than the re- 
quired I'eading simply because they are greatly interested in the subject-mat- 
ter itself, but, in my opinion, the average student of to-day does no more 
than he really has to." 

" I should say students of to-day read widely in history, but not with very 
great steadiness : the greatest bursts are nearest the examination periods." 

Finally a recently graduated Harvard student, and an undergrad- 
uate, to whom in my curiosity on the' subject I was led to apply for in- 
formation as to the reading tendencies among the younger generation 
so far as history from a literary point of view was concerned, kindly 
replied to my queries as follows : — 

" In general my answer to your questions is decidedly that there is very 
little reading done by undergraduates in the older and more solid authors. 
The general tendency seems to be towards newer and abridged works like 
M. Duruy's ' Middle Ages and Modern Times.' What little reading is 
done in books like Gibbon, Carlyle, Hallam, etc., is done in little ' dabs ' : 
there is no thought of a consecutive study of them. Especially is this true 
in the case of Gibbon. I had almost said that the ' Decline and Fall ' is as 
little known here now, as in the daj'S when its use was forbidden as ' unor- 
thodox.' It was one of the books out of which the freshmen in History were 
advised to read a hundred pages, and though I told all my boys that they 
ought at least to look into it and know who Gibbon was, the general ten- 
dency was to fight shy of so weighty a work, and rather to read in books 
like', Professor Emerton's 'Introduction to the Middle Ages.' The ordi- 
nary undergraduate is too much scared by Macaulay's allusiveness to get 
very far with him. I think I am correct in stating that I attended a course 
in which ten or fifteen lectures were devoted to the French Revolution, and 
Carlyle was not mentioned. Sorel and Von Siebel and Rose seem to have 
displaced him. Green is read a little more, I think. 

" Of course it is the exception rather than the rule for the ordinary under- 
graduate to read solid books which are not recommended in his courses. I 



67 

don't think there is any great difference between the present undergraduate 
methods and those of the undergraduates of my day." 

" I think that most undergraduates do very little steady reading in his- 
tory, the general tendency being to keep very near the minimum amount of 
prescribed reading in courses. Many men make sincere resolves to read 
more, and begin to read long works, but those who read from beginning to 
end are few indeed. A great deal of historical information is gained indi- 
rectly through indiscriminate magazine reading, especially in regard to cur- 
rent events. I have found that most of my acquaintances are usually famil- 
iar with So-and-So's article in this or that magazine, from month to mouth. 

" I have myself read the whole of Gibbon several times from beginning 
to end, but I have never known of another undergraduate who had ever 
read so much as one volume through. Of eleven men to whom I addripssed 
the question this morning none had read Gibbon through, three had never 
read a page of his writings, and eight had read ' a few chapters,' these chap- 
ters having been required in a freshman course (History 1). None had 
ever read him voluntarily. 

" I like the style of Macaulay best, but it is more because of his English 
than because of his historical methods. Nine of the eleven men questioned 
also favored Macaulay, and for the same reason, I fancy. Most undergrad- 
uates learn to admire him in English A, and in answering your question the 
men did not seem to discriminate between his English style and his histori- 
cal methods. None seemed to have any opinion as to the merits of the 
methods of the different writers, not ever having given any thought to the 
question. 

" I have myself read Hume, Gibbon, Macaulay, Ridpath, Fiske, Bancroft, 
Prescott, Irving, much biography and many Memoirs, especially of American 
statesmen and of the Napoleonic era, because I like them ; but I think very 
few men do this. Of the men questioned, eight had read Bryce's ' American 
Commonwealth,' which is required in one of Professor Mac Vane's Govern- 
ment courses here. Two had read a part of McMaster's ' United States,' 
in connection with Professor Hart's History 13, and one man, inspired by 
work done in Professor MacVane's History 12, had read May's 'Consti- 
tutional History of England ' from beginning to end. Most men here have 
read Bryce. 

"In the sense implied in your question, no, or very few, undergraduates 
read the long works nowadays. Most of the men I questioned looked at 
me rather quizzically when I asked them this question, as much as to say, 
' What do you take us for ? '" 

The inference from all of which is obvious. In our institutions of 
advanced education, literary form as an element in good historical 
work, when not actually discountenanced, is now whoUy ignored. 
The method in vogue is suggestive of that pursued by the critic of the 
Eatanswill Gazette, in his admired review of the work on Chinese 
metaphysics. The student is expected to improve himself in litera- 
ture in the English Department, and in history and the historical 
methods in the Historical Department ; and, subsequently, combine 
his information. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



016 097 926 4 m 



